


Texts, Hotels, & Post-Its

by Granger4013



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, Fix-it fic, post-Instinct
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-02-22 03:08:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2492231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Granger4013/pseuds/Granger4013
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barely 24 hours after Myka returns from Wisconsin, her phone buzzes. Is it a cry for friendship, or a cry for a future involving so much more than friendship?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Seeking Normality

The first time it happened it was exhilarating.

It started simply, after you had left her standing there in that godforsaken driveway, staring at her out the car window, it taking every ounce of strength you had to not let her see that your world was crumbling beneath your feet. She had said you would never lose her, declarations of friendship—friendship, as if that was remotely possible for you two—passed between you, and she stayed true to her promise. It took less than 24 hours after you left for the first text to arrive. 

“How was your day?”

Innocent enough. Friendly enough. Any sort of contact with her would always be enough, as long as you felt like you were somehow connected to her. It’s late, and you realize that it must be even later there—why would she still be up? Why would she be texting you when she, and everyone else she, sigh, lives with, should have been asleep?—but you push the thoughts aside, happy to imagine her voice rolling around in your mind, rather than in tech speak across the face of your phone.

“Exhausting. Dodgeballs…again.”

It was true. A simple day of inventory, yet again turned into an eight hour gym class, all because even after four years Pete couldn’t help being clumsy.

“He never learns does he?”

.A smile tweaks your lips, and a soft breath of laughter escapes, he may be a clumsy fool, but he was your clumsy fool, and you wouldn’t trade it for anything else, yet you can’t help but appreciate that she’ll always know how this part of your life feels, she’ll always just get it, like no one else.

“Nope. Oh well..keeps things interesting. What about you..how was your day?”

You nestle down into your pillows, pulling your comforter up around your chin, phone casually adrift in your fingers. Your mind tries to tell you that your heart is beating so fast out of exhaustion, rather than anxious anticipation for the next buzz of a message, but you know it’s a fruitless effort. You miss her. You saw her yesterday and you miss her, each message made her feel closer, and so you wait.

“Not over yet. There was a huge break in a case, so now I must sit in anxious anticipation of DNA results.”

Ah, so that would explain the lateness, and the oddity that she would reach out to you when she should be home…with him.

“Sounds fun ;-) So you decided to kill your boredom by texting me huh?”

It comes off more flirty than you intended. Friends, Myka, friends. Your eyes roll at the ridiculousness of it all. 

“Well, yes, and to be honest…I missed you…”

You have to read it two, three times to process what it says, and when you do you feel your heart stutter in your chest. You can’t do this. 24 hours ago you were convincing her to stay with him, and now she’s telling you she misses you. It’s too hard. It’s too confusing. 

“You just saw me yesterday…”

You try to play it off, be subtle about it all, because you know there is no way you can write back what you really want to—I miss you too. I never should have left. I should have made you come with me. Come home.

“I know, but I must admit, it didn’t feel like actually seeing you. Not really.”

What would it mean to actually have seen me? Would actually seeing me have involved not lying about who I was? About who you really are? Would you have felt like you saw me if he hadn’t been there? You let out a long sigh, wondering how to respond. Do you keep playing it cool, to keep things casual? Or do you dare to actually tell her how you felt seeing, or not seeing, her yesterday too? Something about the distance of texting emboldens you to honesty.

“It didn’t did it? Between ya know the saber-tooth whammying, and the, well, the things that have changed it did feel a bit odd. Like we were there but weren’t.”

Ugh. That sounded idiotic. the moment your finger hit send, you wished you could reach through the ether and pluck the message back, replacing it with something coy and offhand. Her response time has slowed. You wonder if you offended her by referencing her new life. How can you tell what’s off limits when this week was the first time you’d spoken in months? Let alone the fact that she’s acting this normal when you haven’t spoken this openly in months. It’s like she’s forgotten everything...anything?...that happened between you two.

“I wish we had had more time to talk. I had so much else I wanted to say to you…there just never seemed to be enough time, let alone the right time for it all.”

What else could she say to you? That she was sorry for disappearing? That she should have called sooner? That this whole Wisconsin thing was some elaborate farce that the Regents made her do, and that she didn’t want this life at all? You know you can’t say that to her. Boy, talk about normal—the two of you talking but leaving way more unsaid than said. Speaking in half-truths and subtlety to avoid saying how you actually felt to each other. And here you go, continuing the trend.

“Well, we’re talking now. So there’s always time to…catch up.”

“I’d much rather talk to you in person. What are you doing this weekend?”

Well that came out of nowhere. 

“Umm…besides working if needed, nothing.”

Where was this going?

“Do you think you could sneak away? Nate and Adelaide are doing some sort of father/daughter weekend camping trip. I’d come to you, but I’m on call for the lab all weekend.”

You didn’t realize you were holding your breath until the air filling your lungs escapes in one loud sigh of exasperation. Your phone buzzes again before you can even think of how to respond to the last message.

“I’d really love to see you.”

It’s like your brain has stopped functioning, and you let your fingers respond without giving it a second thought.

“I think I can get away. I could be in late Friday, is that ok?”

What are you doing? She’s asking you to visit when her live in boyfriend is out of town. Are you insane?   
She just wants to talk, in person. It makes sense after all you’ve been through to not want anything getting lost in text speak or over the phone. It’s not a big deal. A small thought ricochets to the front of your brain, it is a big deal, because what on earth could you two have to talk about that requires being said in person, let alone without anyone really knowing you’re there? Despite claiming she had more to say to you, you thought she made her feelings pretty clear over the last few days, what else is there to say? What more could she tell you? How many more pieces can she cause you to break into?

“That would be perfect. We can have a late dinner.”

“Sounds good. If anything changes I’ll let you know.”

“See you Friday then ”

The smiley face seems so uncharacteristic of her, but you try to imagine the actual smile on her face, rather than the small, far too cheesy emoticon blinking on your screen right now., and it helps. You close your eyes, and try to imagine her face dancing across your eyelids. The image is fleeting, but it’s there, and you feel a smile tug at your own lips.

“See you Friday. Good luck with the test results. Get home safe.”

“I shall. Good night Myka.”

You hear her saying your name in your mind, and then you think that you’ll actually get to hear her say your name in a few days, and you’re terrified by how happy that thought makes you.

“Good night Helena.”

You scroll back through the conversation to the message that says she missed you. You let your eyes linger over it, and then place your phone on your nightstand, curling into your covers, trying to ignore the butterflies that have been fluttering in your stomach from the moment her name flashed across your screen.

 

There’s part of you that keeps expecting, hoping, to hear from her again. There’s another part that keeps telling you to make the first move, but you can’t bring yourself to say anything. So you wait with impatience bordering on insanity for Friday to just get here already. You know you shouldn’t be this excited, you’re setting yourself up for disaster, you know it, yet when it comes to her, you just can’t seem to help yourself, no matter what’s happened. Finally, Friday morning, as you’re wandering the aisles, working on inventory, your phone buzzes again.

“So, should I be expecting you tonight?”

You hate yourself just a little for the smile that’s on your face.

“Yes. My flight gets into Milwaukee at 8.”

“Do you need me to pick you up?”

“No, I already got a rental car. It should take me about an hour to get to you. Where should I meet you?”

Please don’t say the house, please, please don’t say the house. 

“Just come to the house, and then I can drive us to dinner.”

Fuck. You don’t know why you had expected to get through this weekend without seeing that damn house again, but you had gotten a hotel room with that express purpose in mind. Well, the best laid plans…

“Sounds good. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Let me know when you land. Good to know you’re on the ground and safe.”

“Will do.”

You go to put your phone back in your pocket, but it vibrates again before you get the chance.

“By the way, how were you able to get away from the warehouse without raising suspicion?”

“My sister had a baby a few weeks ago. I said I wanted to go visit.”

“Ah, makes sense. Good, ok, see you soon.”


	2. Complicated Honesty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Myka touches down in Wisconsin...what shall the weekend bring??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapters from here on out will be significantly longer than the first. Chapter 1 served as a bit of an introduction into the larger story. At some point, this story will shift to a more M status, and I'll update accordingly when the time comes. For now, enjoy the trouble these two get into whenever they're around each other :-)

The second you’re wheels down, your phone is in your hand texting Helena, letting her know you’ve landed. “Hello Wisconsin.” 

“You’re in early. Wonderful.”

Now that you’re here, you feel so nervous you want to just get on the next plane going anywhere else but here. This was such a bad idea. 

“Yup. Grabbing my car now, I’ll be on the road soon.”

You stop at your hotel to check in and drop off your things. Sure, it’s practical since it’s on the way from the airport, but it’s also self-preservation at it’s best. If your things are already here, then she can’t ask you to stay there, with her. It gives you an out, just in case, but for all you know that’s the last thing on her mind, and you know it shouldn’t be on yours either, yet somehow when it’s the two of you, that’s where your thoughts go unbidden. 

You wish you didn’t, but you make sure you look good before you leave your room. You fix your hair, and God help you, actually touch up your make-up. Yeah, Myka that will really help the self-preservation. Shit, what have you gotten yourself into?

You’ve never wished time would slow down more than you have on this drive. Before you know it, you’re only blocks away, and you feel an overwhelming pressure building in your chest. Unable to put a word to what exactly it is squeezing on your heart, you pull over before you turn onto her road. You have to get yourself under control before you see her, even though you’re not sure that is going to be remotely possible. Head on the steering wheel, you take several deep breaths, trying to convince yourself that this is fine. It’s going to be fine. You’re just visiting a friend. This is what normal people do. They visit, they talk, they go home. No. big. deal. Alright Bering ,you can do this. You drive the small distance left to her house, and it takes every bit of you to actually get out of the car and go knock on the door, but you do, and then…there she is.

“Welcome back.” 

God she looks amazing. She’s smiling that smile at you, and she seems so genuinely happy to see you. 

“Thanks. I must say I didn’t quite expect to be back so soon.” You can’t bring yourself to look her in the eye for more than a few scant milliseconds at a time, if you did, that pressure weighing down your chest might just explode.

“Yet here you are. Are you ready for dinner?”

You give a silent sigh of relief that she is walking out the door without asking you to come in, that she’s immediately ready to go now that you’re here. Maybe she realizes that to go back in that house, where she lives with someone who isn’t you would be too hard, and so she’s sparing you. Or maybe she’s just hungry. 

“Starving.”

She gives a gentle laugh at your eagerness, which nearly makes you die, but she doesn’t notice it, too busy locking the front door, and heading down the drive to her car. The drive to the restaurant passes in relative ease. You tell her about Artie’s plans for Claudia’s 21st birthday party. She tells you that Adelaide has talked about you all week, how “awesome” you were apparently. It’s comfortable, and you remember that this is how it always used to be, when there wasn’t some sort of world-ending catastrophe in your way. She was the one person you could just talk to, and not worry about sounding too nerdy or too wrapped up in work; she accepted you, she, more than anything, understood you, and you’d forgotten how much you’ve missed that. 

“The Wolf and Stag?” You look at her incredulously, “A British pub, really?”

She rolls her eyes at you, “Yes. Trust me, with an eight year old around, there is very little time to actually go out and have a real drink. I figured we both could use it, and plus I wanted to take you somewhere nice, and honestly there isn’t much else around here. I’m just lucky it suits my tastes perfectly.” The last third of her sentence came out rushed and garbled, but you caught the gist. Somewhere nice, huh? She’s making this seem like a date. A date, when she’s living with someone else. No, no, you’re just here to talk. That’s what she said, right? She wanted to talk to you in person, so you came, nothing more, nothing less.

It’s oddly soothing inside. It’s dark, with candles providing most of the light, and there’s a band playing, not loud enough to be annoying, but not quiet enough that it seems pointless. There are enough people inside that you can basically disappear into a booth without too much notice. You both order pints, and an awkward layer of silence falls over you. You order your food, but the comfort of the car has disappeared and you can’t help but notice that she’s lost the ability to look you in the eye. You drink your beer and try to feign attention to the band, but you can’t help stealing looks her way every few seconds wondering, needing to know, what she’s thinking.

“Helena,”  
“Myka,”

Your voices cut across each other, and you both can’t help but laugh. It seems to cut through the tension that’s settled over you. You want to hear what she was going to say, “You…you go first.”

She finally turns her eyes back to you, and it takes you a second to jog your mind to focusing on her words, rather than how beautiful she is. “When you left last week, I…I realized that I didn’t feel as though I’d properly explained myself. Rather than being honest with you, I got defensive, and I wanted to apologize. You deserved a better explanation than what I gave you.”

“No, Helena, please, it’s fine.” You don’t know why you’re pushing off her attempts to explain, but suddenly you feel like you’re not going to be able to handle whatever it is she has to say. 

“No, Myka,” there’s your name…just like you wanted. Stop it, focus. “it isn’t fine. I can’t imagine what you thought, think of me and my…situation.”

Fine, if she wants to talk about this, then let’s talk about it. Get it over with. You just hope you’re going to be able to control the honesty that is threatening to pour out of you as each second ticks by that you can’t take your eyes off of her. 

“Well, if I’m being honest, it did…surprise me. It just doesn’t quite seem like you…at least the you that I know, knew.” You mumble the last word under your breath but you know she heard you, you can see it in the flash of pain that flickers behind her eyes for the briefest of moments. 

“That’s the thing Myka, you do know me. I’ve been trying so hard these past few months to forget about who I am, to change who I am, because I’ve gotten so tired of being hurt and unsure of things. That’s why when I finished my work with the astrolabe, I just escaped, away from everything. I ran away from it all. It would seem that that is what I do best. I thought that I wanted a normal life, that maybe if I settled down, changed some things, that it would make things better, and then Nate was there, and there was Adelaide, and well, she made me want to want this life, but seeing you again, it reminded me of everything that I was running away from, and, well it made me realize that I need to stop running.”

“Then why didn’t you come back with us?” You didn’t mean to say it…but it’s out of your mouth before your brain can kick into gear to filter out what you want to say versus what you should say. 

“Because I wasn’t sure you’d want me to. The things that you said before you left, you seemed like you meant them, and so I wondered if I should try to stay here and make it work, especially if that’s what you thought I should do. I am just so confused Myka, about my life, about where I should be…about us. Plus, there’s the things I’ve built here. I don’t want to hurt anymore people, and yet I know, no matter what I choose, I will, and I can’t bear the thought of hurting Adelaide. She is extraordinary.”

“I caught that last week. You seem to have rubbed off on her a bit.” You’re side-stepping everything else she said, because you aren’t sure how to respond yet. 

“Maybe a little, but I think it mostly comes naturally.” The smile on her face says more than her words ever could, and it kills you to see that she has in fact formed a life here, a life that you have no part of, nor ever could.

Silence falls over you again, and you wish you could just tell her what’s going through your mind, but she seems so torn, and you know this has to be her decision, no one else’s.

“Myka, I wish you’d say something.”

“I wish I would too…” You laugh, in a way that is more of a slightly high pitched sigh, and thankfully she does to. There it is again, that feeling of how you were…together. “I just…I don’t know what to say. I mean don’t get me wrong I have things I want to say, but I don’t want to have that much influence over your life Helena. These are choices you have to make for yourself, I can’t make them for you.”

“I know…I just…well, returning to the Warehouse, yes it would be worthwhile enough, but I don’t want to return just to go back to work…I know it’s selfish, but I can’t help but want to know whether or not…” It’s throwing you off watching this woman, this woman who for so long molded words together for a living fumbling with a simple sentence.

“Us. You want to know if you’d be coming back to us. If there every really was an us….”

You can see the sigh of relief shake through her body, as you’ve released her from the words she couldn’t bring herself to say.

“I’d like to think there was. Wouldn’t you? I mean I know we were never really direct about it, but there was something between us, wasn’t there?”

This is the closest you’ve ever come to actually saying it out loud to each other, and it feels like it’s a line that once crossed can never be uncrossed. 

You look down into your glass, unable to meet her eyes, “There was. There always was, Helena, we just spent all of our time dancing around it, rather than actually talking about it.”

“Well then I’m tired of running…and dancing.”

To hell with it, just say it Myka, “Then come back with me. I should have said it last week. I never should have left without you.”

She smiles, it’s soft and almost relived, but then almost immediately a look of hesitation steals across her features. You hate that look and you know exactly what she’s going to say before the words come out of her mouth.

“I at least owe it to them to explain. I can’t just leave her without telling her why. This may not be the life I want, but that doesn’t mean I need to hurt more people than I already have.”

“I get that. It has to be when you feel it’s right, but, and I kind of can’t believe that I’m saying this, but you need to know, that when you do come back, you can know you are coming home to me, to us, if that’s what you want.” You flush a little at the frank admission, but if doubting your feelings could make her stay here, than you want to erase any doubt right here and now.

“I do Myka. I do want exactly that. I want you.” There’s an honesty shining in her eyes that causes a little bit of the tension that has been sitting in your shoulders to uncoil. Yet, there’s a voice in the back of your head telling you that there’s no way it can be this easy.

There’s so much more to say, but you don’t know how. There are things you want to ask, answers that you’re not sure you’re even ready for, and so you swallow them down, hoping, praying, that she’s serious about this, and that means there will be all the time in the world for all your questions. But there’s that twinge that starts in your stomach and pulls up to tug on your heart, that always comes with her. You somehow can’t stop trusting her, despite the fact that she’s hurt you so much. What if this is just one more time? You’re not sure you can take it if it is, one more time may just break you in two. More words, more fears that you swallow down with the rest of your beer, convincing yourself to just focus on being here with her now. There’s a part of you that says to take what you can get, even if it’s never enough, but there’s always that other part that tells you to get the hell out, because if you can’t have all of her, then it’s not worth it. 

She’s staring at you with a look that you can’t figure out. It’s like she’s trying to read your mind and memorize your face all at once. It’s disconcerting, and yet you can’t take your eyes off her either. 

The waiter coming back with her credit card is enough to shake you from whatever just passed through you both. 

“I really wish you would have let me…”

“Myka, you just flew over three hours on short notice to see me, I think the least I can do is buy you dinner.” 

“Well thank you… for dinner…and for asking me to come.” You can’t help yourself. “I’m glad I did.”

The smile that she gives you makes you wonder if you’re going to be able to stand up, your knees feel like they’d give out the second you put any weight on them. “You have no idea how happy I am that you’re here.”

It’s almost 11 by the time you leave the restaurant, and as you get in the car, you can feel the awkwardness settle back in, because she hasn’t asked if you got a hotel, and you haven’t told her you did, but she also didn’t ask you to bring a bag in the house when you got there either. The small details of this little trip flew out the window in the face of just seeing each other, and now you can tell she wants to ask ,but doesn’t know how, so she doesn’t, not directly at least.

“So are your things still in your car, or did you come all the way to Wisconsin with only the clothes on your back, like some sort of woeful Dickensian character?” She’s smirking because she’s teasing you, but you think it’s also because she knows she’s skirting her real question. Are you staying with me or somewhere else?

You realize you’re fidgeting with your hands, because there’s a part of you that, now, wants to stay with her, no matter where that is, but you know the hotel is the safest bet. This, your mind tells you, is precisely why you dropped your bag off in the first place, to avoid this exact situation.

“Umm..no actually, I dropped my stuff off at my hotel before I came to your place.”

She’s disappointed, she tries to hide it, but you see it. Jesus, what did she think this weekend was? Exactly what you secretly hoped it could be too.

“Ah, right. You could have stayed with me you know? It seems silly to stay at a hotel, there’s plenty of room.”

“I didn’t want to impose, and we didn’t really talk about it, so I figured it made sense.”  
More silence. 

She clears her throat, and you can see her trying to keep her composure, but whether it’s almost lost to sadness, frustration, or something less friend-like you can’t be sure. “Well, shall I drop you there and you can get your car later, or would you prefer to drive over yourself?” 

She’s trying so hard to sound casual. You know you should have her take you back to your car, you can leave immediately, and there won’t be any of this, this confused longing. Yet, you know that your hotel is on the way to her place, and it makes sense, and it would eliminate the back and forth, and…you could ask her to stay. No, no, no, there will be no staying anywhere.

“It’s actually right on our way, so I guess you can just drop me off there, avoid the back and forth. Except that means you would have to retrieve me at some point tomorrow.”

“Retrieve you? You make yourself sound like a package at the post office or something. But that won’t be a problem, I was going to ask if you wanted to have coffee in the morning anyway, and my favorite little coffee shop is right around here, so it would work out fine.”

She has a favorite place here. Of course she does you fool, she lives here, she has a home here. You grind your teeth around the memory of her favorite place in Univille, what should be her home. A small, out of the way place that actually made good tea, where she would sneak off to read and sometimes write when she needed to be on her own. You remember the way you would always find her there when she wasn’t at the B&B, how she’d always look up when you walked in and seem so happy that you had discovered where she was. Never resisting your interruption, sometimes sharing what she had written, other times just pushing out the opposite chair with her feet, for you to settle in with your own book, and you’d stay there for hours in the contented silence that worked so well for you both.

“That sounds good to me. Wait, get off here, my hotel is right there on that corner.”

“This works perfectly, the coffee shop is just a few streets down, if it’s nice we can walk there.” She pulls into the parking lot, and you notice that she intentionally pulls into a parking spot, rather than just dropping you at the door. God, this is worse than some teenaged first date, unsure what to do next. 

“Do you want to come up for a bit?” Wow, wasn’t expecting that to slip out. You could have sworn you only said that in your head. “We could…keep talking.”

You can tell her fingers are itching to unfasten her seat belt to bolt out of the car and go right up to your room, but she stays remarkably calm, just like Helena you think, calm under all kinds of pressure. “It’s not too late for you darling? You must be exhausted.”

She’s giving you an out, Myka, take it, take it before you drag this woman up to your hotel room where you might not be able to control yourself, “No, I’m fine, really. I slept a little bit on the plane anyway. Plus, I’ve missed just being able to talk to you.” Did you really have to say that? Yes, you did, because it’s true and you know you don’t want her to leave.

She turns to you then, and there’s that sadness creeping into her eyes again, “I’ve missed it too. I…I hate myself for absenting myself from your life for so long.”

Ok, conversations not to have in a car in a parking lot. “Helena…” you wish your voice sounded stronger, not all cracked and breathy, “so much happened, but this isn’t something we have to talk about in your car in the middle of a parking lot. Come on.” You climb out of the car without giving her a chance to respond. Her footsteps fall into place next to yours, as she follows you through the doors, and up the stairs to your room on the second floor.   
It isn’t until you cross the threshold of your room that you truly realize how insane this is. Who comes to a hotel room to talk? You bring someone up to your hotel room to precisely not talk. There’s a chair next to the window, and you settle into it, leaving it up to her whether she sits at the small table in the corner, on the bed, or on the footrest that’s right in front of you. Your heart flutters a bit when she chooses the option closest to you, and curls one leg under herself on the ottoman. She’s leaning back on her hands, and you think you’ve never seen her look so perfect. 

“Can I ask you something?” You’re barely settled in, but the question practically leaps out of your mouth.

“Anything darling.” and you believe her, because she looks so relaxed and open that you could probably ask her to jump out the window and she would, just for you.

“Why didn’t you call me?” You know your voice sounds small, like a wounded child wondering why their friend is playing ball with someone else.

She takes a deep breath, “Right to the most complicated question huh?”

“Sorry…”

“No, Myka, don’t be sorry, you have every right to ask me that.” She’s leaned forward and put one of her hands on your knee, and you can feel the pressure of her fingers through the material, urging you to focus on what she has to say. “The reality of what happened in those last days with Sykes, it unnerved me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that I had almost lost you, that I had had your life in my hands, and if I had messed up you would be gone, and the weight of that, I felt like it would drown me. It wasn’t just the reality of what the Warehouse can do to your life, the risks it forces you to face, but it was the reality of what I felt when I thought of losing you. And then, I realize that it didn’t really happen, but the idea that in some version of the story it did, that I was willing to sacrifice myself for you, because it would have been for you Myka, obviously I wouldn’t want anyone else to get hurt, but it was only you I would have been thinking about…Myka, I recognized how dangerously close I was to not being able to live without you…and.” Up until now she had been staring intently at you, willing you to hear every word, but now she looks away. “Myka, I’ve already been through the pain of losing the one thing I couldn’t live without. I just…I couldn’t bear the thought of doing that again, it terrified me. What I felt for you terrified me, because it opened me up to feeling that loss again. I felt a pang of it, when you were in that godforsaken chair in Hong Kong, and I knew it would kill me if I lost you. I knew what would happen to me if I did…you saw what happened to me when I lost Christina…I don’t want to turn into that person again.” 

It takes you a second to realize that there are small tears at the corner of her eyes, and you can’t stop your fingers from reaching up to wipe them away. She tries to lean into your touch, but you pull away before the feeling can linger. 

“But yet you still essentially forced yourself to lose me, Helena. You were so afraid of losing me that you left, and didn’t talk to me for months. You put yourself into the exact situation you were trying to avoid. I can’t say I get that.”

“I know, but I thought…I thought it would be enough to know that you were out there, but that I was removed from the daily life of facing the things that could harm you. It’s unbelievably selfish, I know that. My not being there wasn’t going to keep you from harm’s way, but it would keep me from facing it head on.”

She’s right, it’s probably one of the most selfish things you’ve ever heard, honestly. That she would leave to save her own heart, without giving any heed to what it might do to you…you want to scream at her, and yet you find you can’t.  
Your words escape in a whisper, and you wonder if she’s even able to hear you. “Did you give even one second of thought to what that might do to me? Did you ever think about how losing you might make me feel?” You inwardly kick yourself, just a little, for the tears that slip down your cheeks, but it’s too much. Knowing she ran from you, not because she didn’t want you, but because she was too much of a coward to face reality was too much for you to bear. Helena was many things, but the one thing you never, ever thought you would call her is a coward, yet here you were, and that’s all you can think.

“Myka, I wasn’t sure if you even felt the same way about me.”

“Oh please,” and you’re glad that there’s a tinge of anger in your words, because of all the things she’s said tonight that has to be the most ridiculous. You force yourself out of the chair, because being this close to her is clouding your thoughts, and you can’t keep up this fight if she’s clinging onto our knee like it’s the only thing holding her to this earth. You anchor yourself against the TV stand, fingers clenched around the edge so tight you’re afraid you might scratch it. “Don’t give me that, sure we were never open about it, but I think I made it perfectly clear how I felt about you. You said it yourself tonight at dinner, you called us, well an us. That’s enough to tell me you knew how I felt about you, so don’t give me some cheap excuse about this being about me. Plus, if you needed proof all you had to do was think about it for one damn second, it isn’t exactly normal to leave your job, just because one of your friends hurt you. Jesus Helena, how could you say you didn’t know, after all the times I fought for you, put my own job, my own life, my own sanity on the line for you. And don’t even get me started on Hong Kong, what passed between us when I was in that chair, and when I was finally out of it, that wasn’t just some casual friend thing. Say whatever you want, but don’t use me as an excuse for you simply being afraid of loving me.” 

Ok, well this probably wasn’t the best time to throw that word out there for the first time, but what else could it be? What else could have driven you both to this point? Maybe you weren’t ready to say it just yet, God knows this isn’t the ideal moment, but there’s too much at stake to not at least get it out there. 

She turns to face you, but doesn’t leave the ottoman. “It wasn’t just fear of loving you Myka, it was fear of losing you. I’ve told you that.”

Your mind darts around the realization that she didn’t skirt the issue of essentially admitting she loved you, but your mind careens quickly from that thought to the next, which is the one that flies out of your mouth like daggers, “Can you please stop acting like you’re the only person in this room that has lost someone you loved?” Your voice is tight, and your words scratch at the back of your throat so hard you almost can’t breathe.

She looks at you like you’ve just slapped her across the face, and you wonder if that one sentence was the perfect dose of reality to either send this spiraling to hell or actually save you both. She isn’t saying anything and now that you’ve said it, your words keep pouring out.

“Helena, I loved Sam. I loved him so much I thought it would kill me. I let it cloud my judgment to the point of forgetting to care that he was married. I let it affect every ounce of my life, because nothing else mattered other than how much I loved him, and in one split second, a second that I should have been there, he was gone. He died in my arms, and I would have been happy to lie down and die with him. So I get it, you know I get it. It’s not like any of this is news to you. So you don’t think that it scared the hell out of me too when I realized that I was falling for you? You don’t think that the moment I saw you in London, and felt like someone had stopped my heart from beating, that I wasn’t petrified that I was going to have to go through it again? Let alone the fact that it feels like I have!” And now you’re practically screaming, and you can’t even bring yourself to care, let alone stop, “Between Yellowstone, and the hologram, and the Emily Lake fiasco, and the weird alternate universe vision that I can still see in my nightmares somehow, and then last week, when I came here and saw you with him…I feel like I’ve lost you a thousand times over, and each time it’s been torture, and yet every time I try to convince myself to stop loving you, I can’t. If I had, I wouldn’t be here. I’ve lost you so many times, and yet here I am, standing in front of you, when I know you could just as easily hurt me again. You asked, and I came, because somehow there’s not a single thing in this world, or in any other world apparently, that can stop me from loving you.” Good Lord, for not thinking this was the right time for that word, you’re sure saying it a lot, Bering; get yourself together. Yet you know it’s fruitless, she has to know how you feel about her, it’s gone too long without saying it out loud. 

She looks stunned, and you realize it’s the first time you’ve actually seen her look really, truly shaken. You honestly have no idea what you expect her to say, there’s part of you that wonders if she’s just going to storm out, and there’s part of you that wouldn’t really blame her, because you know you’ve just flung more information at her than most people could handle, but inwardly you’re praying she stays. When she untangles her legs from underneath her and begins walking towards you, you worry she might actually be leaving, and your eyes sink to the floor, unwilling to watch her leave you, again, but then you see her feet stop directly in front of you, and before you can look up, her hands are resting underneath your jaw, urging your face upward. You only look her in the eyes for a fleeting second, because once she presses her lips against yours, your eyes slam shut at the intensity and surprise of it all. You don’t even fight it, because it’s what you’ve wanted for so long, you don’t particularly care how it’s happening. Her lips are soft but insistent, pressing against you like you’re helping her to breathe. You lose your hands in her hair, holding onto her like she’s your last tether to existence. You can’t stop yourself from opening your lips to her, and when you finally feel her tongue slide across yours you let out a gasp that is so involuntary you surprise yourself, and you hate just a little bit that it sounded less like a gasp and more like a sob. After what feels like hours, she slowly breaks the kiss, but she leaves her hands on your cheeks, where the tears you didn’t even realize you were shedding are pooling across her fingers. When you look at her, you realize she’s crying too, and you both can’t help but laugh at how crazy you must look. She leans in again, just to brush lightly against your lips, it’s short and beautiful, but nothing compares to when she barely pulls away from you, and whispers against your lips, “I love you too.”

You know there is so much more that you both need to say. This simple declaration, so long in coming, isn’t enough to erase everything else that has been said between you tonight, and it doesn’t change the hurt you’ve both caused each other for too many years, no it doesn’t solve anything, but for now, for tonight, it’s a step in the right direction. It’s late, and you’re exhausted, but you can’t bear the thought of letting her out of your arms. You know you shouldn’t because it’s the two of you, and there’s only one bed, and she is still living with someone else, but your self-control seems to have abandoned you the second your lips felt hers. “Stay with me tonight.”

She takes one small step back from you, but tangles her fingers with yours, “Myka, do you really think that’s a good idea?” The doubt that flickers behind her eyes makes you nervous, but you shove it aside, choosing for tonight to just exist with her.

“Probably not, but I don’t want you to leave,” and you tighten your fingers around hers, willing her to stay.

“I don’t want to either darling, but…if I stay, I…I don’t know if…”

“Helena…nothing will happen, I promise. I just…I just want you here.” 

Her resolve is clearly as weak as yours at the moment, “Then here is where I shall be.” She leans in and gives you another small kiss, and then goes back to the ottoman and starts taking off her boots. 

You grab your bag from the bed, and go to the bathroom, deciding it is probably safer to change behind closed doors, eliminating as much temptation as possible, for both of you. Looking at yourself in the mirror, you can already notice a change, it’s odd, but the tension, so present in your shoulders lately seems to have lifted, and the blush in your cheeks makes you smile. Happy, that’s how you look Myka, happy, something you haven’t been in months. You throw on your pajamas, and grab a few things out of your bag before going back out into the room. She’s in the exact same place you left her, shoes off, but looking extremely uncertain about what to do next. You’ve solved that problem for her, you toss a bundle of clothes at her, and she catches them despite being off guard, shooting you a quizzical look. 

“I always pack extra. You can sleep in those.”

You see her let out a sigh of relief, “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

She retreats behind the closed door, and you curl yourself under the covers. There’s a twinge of guilt in the back of you mind, telling you that this is foolish, that you should have let her go home. Flashes of Sam’s wife streak across your mind unbidden, and they leave you shaking. Don’t do this again, Myka. Don’t be the other woman again, you can’t, it will kill you. You hear the door click open, and when you see her standing there, gracefully awkward in your t-shirt and gym shorts, your thoughts fly away, leaving behind only echoes of hope that she’ll come home. This time it will be different. She’s not Sam, and you aren’t the same person you were before, and when she climbs in next to you, nestling into the crook of your shoulder, you place a quick kiss into her hair, and pray that you’re right.

Just as sleep is threatening to overtake you, she shifts to prop herself up on her elbow so she can look at you, but she doesn’t say anything at first.

“What is it?” She looks so worried, and you can honestly say you have no idea what is rustling just below the surface of her mind.

“I need you to know something. I need you to know that I am so unbelievably sorry about not calling you Myka. Sorry for letting this happen this way, for pushing you away, for making you feel like you had to lose me over and over again. I am a complete fool, and I hate that my insecurity and stupidity caused you so much pain. I know I shouldn’t say it because it will sound so contrary, but I never wanted to hurt you, and I will spend the rest of my days trying to make up for the pain I’ve caused you. Maybe it is very unfair of me to say it this way, but there’s no better truth that I can give you, other than to say, that there hasn’t been a day since I laid eyes on you that I have not loved you. I only regret that I was too much of a coward to not tell you that everyday, and let love be the thing that got us through the rest of the difficulty.”

There’s part of you that wants to diffuse the situation with a smart compliment about how good she is with words, but you stop yourself, letting the full weight of this moment, this moment that feels like it’s about to change everything, sink in. What she has just said to you deserves a proper response, not something trite. You tuck a stray piece of her hair behind her ear. “I love you too. We are both guilty of not saying it, not doing something about it, and for my part in that I am equally sorry. I had just as many opportunities as you to tell you that I couldn’t bear the thought of being away from you, and I didn’t. But, thank you, for apologizing for the rest of it. I’m not going to lie to you and say that I wasn’t hurt, and that it won’t linger, but it won’t be there forever. And, as much as I kind of hate to admit it, I get why you did it. I really do. Weren’t you the one who had to tell me to stop running from my truth first? So I’ve been there, and now we’ll move forward, because no matter what has happened, I believe in us Helena. I always have, and I always will. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be here. It’s time for us both to stop dwelling on and living in the past, but finally start looking at what kind of future we want to have, the kind of future we could have, if we both would just stop running away from each other.”

She’s smiling, which you take as a good sign, though there’s still a sadness that ghosts behind her eyes, “I’ve already told you, I’m done running.”

“I am too,” and you push up on your elbows to kiss her, simple, soft. She curls back into your shoulder, and you let your arm grasp her around her waist, holding her tightly to you, worried that if you let go she might disappear, that this might not be real. Eventually, you roll over, and she holds you tightly to her, and in the comfort of each others arms you finally find sleep.

The rest of the weekend floats away in a swirl of normality and relaxed ease. You get coffee, and laugh when she pushes your chair out for you with her feet, eyes never leaving her book, just like she used to. She only goes back to the house to retrieve clothes and other necessities, so that she can stay with you until you leave. You keep your promise, nothing more passes between you than a few innocent, though passion-soaked kisses. You discover that, despite being shorter than you, she likes to sleep curled against your back, arm clutched tightly around your waist. You don’t say anything more about Friday night’s conversation. You both know you need to, but are unwilling to break the spell that seems to have settled over you in this place, where it feels like you can finally be together how you always wished you could be. You almost forget that this is temporary, and there are flights to catch, and people coming home who have no idea you were there, and once again there’s that twinge of guilt. You linger longer than you should on Sunday afternoon, knowing you’re running the risk of missing your flight, and you almost want to, but know you can’t. You’re both leaning against your cars in the hotel parking lot, having retrieved your rental from her house last night. You don’t know what to say. You want to ask when you’ll see her again, but that would drag up a larger conversation than you can have right now. 

She breaks the silence for you, “Call me when you get in.”

“Have to keep tabs on me, huh?”

“Always darling,” and she smirks, turning her eyes away from you, thinking that you’ve missed the flash of pain there. You wonder if it’s there because you’re leaving, or because she knows there is so much of your life that she’s missed, tabs she most certainly hasn’t kept, or possibly both.

You step towards her, entwining one of her hands in yours, leaning to rest your forehead against hers, “We’ll figure this out.”

“Bering and Wells, solving problems, saving the day, just like always.” She sounds more certain than she looks.

“Finally got the order right. That’s my girl.”

The look she gives you rocks your insides, “I am, you know? Yours. I know I’m here, but I won’t be forever. I will make this right, Myka. I will come home, to you. To us.”

“I know you will,” and now it’s your turn to sound more certain than you look or feel.

“You’re going to miss your flight…”

“Ugh…I know. Ok, I’ll call you when I land.” You don’t care who sees you or what they think, you pull her into you, kissing her, hoping you’re conveying everything you feel before you have to turn around and go. When you break away, you hug her, whispering into her ear, “I love you, Helena.”

She squeezes you tight, “I love you too, my darling Myka.”

She opens your car door for you, and you pull away, loathe to turn your eyes towards the road and away from her, but you do, feeling emptier with each mile that passes beneath your wheels.


	3. There's Always Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helena has some news for Myka

Two weeks. Two mind-numbing, interminable weeks drag by. Every free second you have is spent in contact with the other. You start marking your days by the messages she sends you. The near constant contact makes you almost feel like she’s right next to you, like she’s a part of your daily life, but the pang you feel every night when you lay down to sleep, alone, reminds you that she’s not here, she’s there, and she certainly isn’t going to bed alone. 

You’re thankful when the ping comes that sends you to Paris. Losing yourself in work is the only thing you can think of that might save you from drowning in desperation to see her. There is one thing that never fails though, no matter what time zone you find yourself in, she always calls on her way home from work, and there’s something so blissfully normal about that, that you find you don’t care if it wakes you up in the middle of the night, or distracts you from work during the day. 

It’s your third morning in Paris, and you’re just climbing out of the shower, when you hear your phone ringing, her ring, from the other room. You’re not even embarrassed that you’ve changed your settings to give her a separate ringtone, because it was the best way to know when it’s her, and it feels like a little secret, one more to add to the pile, between you two. You almost trip over the bed trying to get to your phone before it stops ringing, and you know you sound out of breath when you answer, “Hey…”

“Hello darling, are you quite alright? You sound like you’ve had to run miles to get to your phone.”

“No, I’m good. I was just getting out of the shower, so I had to scramble to get to my phone. I didn’t want to miss your call.”

“Well there’s an image to get me through the night,” and you can hear her smirking from a thousand miles away, but you don’t give into the temptation to tease her with the fact that you’re talking to her in just a towel. You change the subject by mentally doing the math to realize just how late it would have to be there, if it’s morning for you. “Helena, why are you driving home from work now? It must be after midnight there.” 

“It is. 12:15 to be exact. It’s this case. It’s driving me mad. There are more forensics to go through than I’ve ever seen, and nothing is coming up as conclusive. The evidence is seeming to point to three different people at the crime scene, even though there’s only one victim, and seemingly a crime committed by only one person. I can’t figure out what I’m missing.”

You can hear the frustration in her voice, and you smile because you love when she’s this intense about work. “Do you have any suspects?”

“ A few, but without concrete evidence, there’s not much the police can do, and being the one to provide the concrete evidence, you can imagine they aren’t very happy with me.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Quite alright, I’ll figure it out eventually, but enough about me. How’s the city of lights treating you my love? Any leads on the artifact?”

“We’re getting there. Pete spent most of the day yesterday combing over every inch of the opera house, trying to figure out what’s making people disappear. There’s nothing there, so today we’re going over to Gaston Leroux’s house, to see if there’s something there. This whole thing just seems to be screaming “Phantom of the Opera,” so it seems the next best place to look.”

“It would seem the most likely connection, given that all the people who have disappeared are young women, sharing many characteristics with Leroux’s Christina.”

“I just hope that disappeared doesn’t mean…well gone permanently,” you sigh, thinking of the long day ahead of you. You just hope today is the day that something breaks, you’re ready to go home.

“I know darling.” There’s that pause. That pause that means she’s almost home, which she never wants to tell you. She’s been very careful about not mentioning Nate, and you appreciate it, though it’s done little to assuage your guilt that this, whatever this is, is happening while she’s still living with him. 

“Almost home, huh?” 

She laughs, “You know me too well, but yes. All I want to do is take a long, hot shower, and sleep for ten hours, unfortunately the shower is probably the only part of that I’m going to get.”

“What time do you have to be back into the lab?”

“8:30, no rest for the weary I suppose.”

“Try to get some sleep at least. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, well your tomorrow, I suppose it will still be my today.” You feel your brows crinkle at the lack of clarity in what you’re saying, “Whatever, I’ll talk to you soon.”

Another laugh that sends a wave of warmth down your spine, “Call me when you get a chance. I miss you darling.”

You try to hide the exasperated sigh that leaves your lips, but you fail miserably, “I miss you too…enjoy your shower.” You cover your sadness by putting a particular lilt into your voice with that last phrase, letting her know that you’re appreciating getting the same kind of image you gave her earlier.

“Oh I shall…have a good day. Good luck with Leroux’s house.”

“Thanks. Good night, Helena.”

“Good night for me, good morning for you Myka.”

You laugh at how, for lack of a better word, adorable she sounds, “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

It takes several seconds for either of you to disconnect, but eventually you do, resting your phone against your chest for the briefest of moments, willing it to actually bring her here to you. You know it’s foolish, but at this rate you’re willing to try anything.

You finally get home early Friday morning, after five days in Paris, with an artifact successfully snagged, bagged, and tagged. It turns out it was merely a coincidence that all the people to disappear were women, it had nothing to do with “Phantom of the Opera,” but luckily everything to do with Leroux. He had been a detective of a sort as well as a writer, and at one point had been involved in an investigation at the opera house involving a cell hidden in the basement that was used to hold revolutionaries of the Paris Commune. Last week, some of his notes from the case had been available for the public to see at his home, and the people who disappeared were those who had failed to heed the signs to not touch. Making contact with his notes had imbued the affected with a strong need to go to the opera house, and somehow find their way into the basement that still contained the cell. Luckily, there was little harm done to them, besides spending a few too many days without food, and they were returned to their loved ones in one piece. 

You’re exhausted, and thankfully Artie has given you and Pete the weekend off for a job well done, entrusting any pings to Steve and Claudia. You intend on spending the entire weekend curled up in your room, doing nothing but reading and sleeping. 

Before you can collapse in a heap on the floor you shoot Helena a quick text to let her know you’re back safe and sound. She’s become very picky about that, wanting to know you’re safe. You won’t admit it, but you kind of love her attentiveness. “I’m finally home. Now I am going to shower and then be comatose for the foreseeable future.” 

“Lovely idea darling.”

“Call me when you head home…it’ll be a good wake up call.”

“Will do.”

When you wake up, it’s almost nine and you feel a wave of panic that you haven’t heard from Helena. She rarely works this late on a Friday, and you can’t fight the immediate worry that something is wrong. Right as you reach for your phone to text her, it buzzes, a message, not a call. You figure she’s letting you know why it’s so late, but what you’re greeted with is enough to make your jaw drop. There are no words to the message, simply a picture, a picture of the “Welcome to Univille” sign. There’s no way. She can’t be here, can she? Suddenly your fingers are shaking as you try to make them dial her number. 

She answers within one ring, and you’re greeted with her laugh coming through, “Well, that didn’t take long. Hello darling.”

“Helena! What are you doing here? Wait, you are here, right?” You know you sound insane, but you don’t particularly care.

She keeps laughing, “I am.”

“Why? How? Wow…I sound crazy. Sorry.”

“No apologies needed, I would say you sound enthusiastic rather than crazy, it’s quite sweet actually. To answer you questions, Nate took Adelaide to Chicago to visit her mother’s parents, so I took advantage of the weekend alone. I figured last time you came to me, so this time I thought I would return the favor.”

You want to care that this so desperately feels like sneaking around. Feels like Myka? It is sneaking around, but the idea of being able to see her is enough to dispel the thought quickly. Unaware of your inner arguing, she keeps talking, “Plus, I have some news I wanted to share with you…in person.”

That snatches your attention away from your mental turmoil. “What is it?”

“I said in person darling. Now, would you be willing to grace me with your presence, or have I come to the middle of nowhere South Dakota, only to be left to my own devices?”

Immediately you’re out of bed, and throwing things into a bag. If she’s here, and you have the weekend off, you’re not going to waste one more second., “Where are you staying?”

“I feel rather guilty about that, but I procured a room at Leena’s competitors. Not that Univille really provides that many other options, not exactly the height of tourism around here.”

She was right. There was Leena’s, a rather creepy motel in the middle of town, and another B&B on the opposite end of town, but other than that Univille provided distinctly few options for overnight accommodations. 

“Ok, give me a little bit and I’ll meet you there.”

“I cannot wait to see you.”

“Me neither. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Ok, how the hell are you going to get out of the B&B for the whole weekend without raising any questions? That problem was solved for you when you found the note attached to your door as you headed downstairs. 

“Mykes—Didn’t want to wake you. Steve and Claudia got called out on a ping, New Mexico. I’m going to bed. See you in the morning. –Pete”

Spectacular, you can beg off that you went for a run or something before Pete gets up in the morning, and find an excuse to spend the day away from Leena’s, alone time or something. You’ll have to make an appearance tomorrow night, but you can make it work. You grab your keys from the table by the door, and practically sprint to your car. 

It’s only a few miles away, but you feel like it takes you forever to get there. You don’t quite know how this B&B works with people just dropping in, but you try the door and it unlatches willingly. You walk into a small living area, and your breath catches in your throat because she’s right there waiting for you. Settled into a chair by the fire, book in hand, looking as casual and collected as possible. You whisper a word of thanks that there’s no one else around, because you can’t stop yourself from dropping your bag right inside the door, eliminating the distance between you in all of three steps, and pulling her into a kiss that makes sparks fly behind your eyes. Your hands are lost in her hair, and her arms are so tight around your waist you wonder if she might actually lift you off the ground. 

Finally, you break apart, only to hold her tightly against you, arms thrown around her neck, “God, I’ve missed you so much,” it’s whispered into her hair, but you know she hears you, because she squeezes you even tighter. 

“I missed you too…you have no idea.” She reluctantly lets you go, but grabs your hand, and walks to the door to retrieve your bag before she leads you upstairs to her room.

She throws your bag onto the bed, and before she barely has a chance to turn around, you’ve captured her in your arms again, kissing her with long, slow intentionality. You don’t think you realized it was possible to miss someone this much, but as her hands snake around your neck you want to cry at the reality that she’s right here in your arms. It takes every ounce of self-control in your body to not let your fingers graze underneath her shirt, or to move your lips down to her neck, every fiber of your being is crying out to do just that, but you refuse to let yourself go there. Finally breaking away you can’t resist the question that has been running through your mind since you hung up the phone, “So what’s this news you have to tell me?”

She only lets you pull away so far, keeping her arms firmly around your neck, and thus rooted securely in her arms. “Rather impatient aren’t we?”

You swoop in and drop a swift kiss to her lips, “Yes.”

She laughs, and it sounds like heaven. “Well, you’re not exactly giving me a chance to be all cunning and dramatic with my revelations. I was rather hoping to string you along, teasing you, until you begged me to tell you.” She’s running her fingers down your back now, and you feel yourself arch into the contact, half-tempted to give in to her suggestion. 

“I’m not that easy…” The tone of your voice shocks you, and you can see her eyes flutter as she draws in a breath. You revel just a moment in your ability to turn this ever-in-control woman into a bundle of nerves. 

She recovers quickly, “No, I would rather imagine you aren’t…”

“So, then, tell me…please…tell…me.” You punctuate every word with a kiss against her lips, each growing in intensity and length, until you pull yourself from her arms and cross to the other side of the room, “Nope, no more, until you tell me.”

She groans so loud you laugh, “Fine, rob me of all my fun..”

“If you don’t tell me that is precisely what I’ll be doing, tell me though, and that’s a whole other story” you cut across her words, shooting her a quick wink in the process. 

She acts as though she can’t feel the blush that’s creeping into her cheeks, but you don’t miss a second of it. “I am a slave to your impatience darling. What I came here to tell you, what I couldn’t wait to tell you, what I flew three hours to tell you, what I dragged myself to South Dakota to tell you…”

“Helena…”

“Is that I handed in my two weeks’ notice at work today.”

For the second time tonight, your jaw drops, it’s totally involuntarily, and you feel as though every thought has completely escaped your mind. “Wait, what?” There is no word other than stunned that can describe how you feel.

She’s walking towards you with painful slowness, accenting each step with words you have to struggle to pay attention to, “I said, I gave my boss my two weeks’ notice today. Which means, that two weeks from this very moment, I won’t just be coming to visit,” and now she’s right in front of you, tangling your fingers together and drawing your arms around her waist, “I’ll be coming home, to you.” 

And then the entire world goes blank, and all those thoughts of self-control from earlier fly out the window, because she has you pressed up against the wall, and her hands have drifted underneath your t-shirt to rest on your waist, and it feels like your skin is on fire. Your hands chase up the back of her shirt and you let your fingernails drift down her back, realizing that there may be no more heavenly sound than her groaning in pleasure against your lips. You move just enough to allow your lips to begin trailing down her jaw line, before nipping and sucking ever so slightly against her neck. You hear her gasp, and you drag the top of your tongue down the line of her pulse, and the hands that were once resting against your waist, are now gripping so tightly around your hips that you know the marks of her fingernails will linger in your skin, marks of possession that make you want her even more. Just as your adjusting your angle to gain purchase against her collarbone, her voice jars you from your attention to her skin, “Myka…wait” and she sounds unlike you’ve ever heard her, shaky, longing, and ever-so quiet. She pushes harder against your hips, but this is different, it’s not in desire, but in an effort to gain distance. She keeps her hands against your skin, but her head drops, and she won’t look you in the eye.

“Helena?”

It takes little effort to get her to look back up at you, but you can’t get a read on what she’s thinking, “Helena what is it?”

She brings one hand up to run through your hair and against your cheek, “Myka, I love you, truly, but if we keep doing what we’re doing, I’m going to run out of self-control, and….” her eyes dart away from yours, until the rest comes out in a rush, “I can’t bring myself to let our first time together be something that puts you in the position of being the other woman. That’s not even remotely close to how I want it to be.”

If it wasn’t for the rabid desire coursing through your veins you would agree with her immediately, but now that you’ve felt her against you, you don’t know how to stop, “Helena, I don’t…”

“Myka Bering do not even say that you don’t care, because I know you do, besides the fact that I just said that I do most ardently care as well. I am not going to take you to bed like you’re some clandestine, weekend romp. When I take you to bed it will be because you are the woman that I love more than life itself, and I am free to be with you for the rest of my days.”

She reaches up to pull your hands out from around her back, and hangs them grasped in hers at your sides, forehead rested gently against yours. It takes you several moments to find the words you want to say, and when you do they come out in a marvelously ineloquent, “Thank you.”

She pulls back from you just slightly, looking genuinely confused, “Thank you? I must say when one has just refused to sleep with someone else, they hardly expect to be thanked for it.”

And that’s when you finally meet her eyes, “Yes, thank you. Thank you for keeping me from being a person I swore I would never be again. I somehow have convinced myself to forget that I’ve been the other woman before, but if I’m being honest, this, us, it’s been terrifying me that that’s what I would turn into again.”

“Oh Myka…believe me, when I asked you to come to Wisconsin, I had no intention of anything happening between us. I had hoped I would be able to tell you how I felt, and that the promise of a soon-coming future would be enough, but obviously we both failed miserably at that happening. I never wanted to put you in a position to feel like this. I just…I couldn’t keep myself from kissing you.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted you to, I didn’t want you to. Helena, this isn’t a one-sided thing, I wanted you just as much, I want you just as much, but you’re right, we can’t, hence the thank you.”

“You never cease to amaze me.”

“I try my best.”

There’s a weighty pause that lingers, and you can see her fighting with some sort of question, trying to maneuver it around in her mind so that it makes sense. Finally, she seems to find the words she’s looking for.

“So I realize it seems entirely hypocritical to ask this, given my recent noble stance, but these…boundaries, we’ve established. They won’t keep you from staying here this weekend?”

You love how she makes no effort to hide how badly she wants you to say that it won’t, “No, of course not. You couldn’t drag me out of here if you tried. We’ll just…keep things…controlled, shall we say?”

“Controlled, yes. Well, then what are we to do with ourselves?”

“Given the fact that I just spent the last nine hours in bed, working off jet lag, I am woefully not as tired as I’m sure you are. How about we both get into our pajamas, curl up, and put on a movie?”

“That sounds perfect,” and she gives you one last kiss before disappearing into the bathroom to change.

It stuns you how blissfully normal this all feels, like you’re just an ordinary couple, spending an ordinary Friday night at home. She’s laying with her head in your lap, your fingers idly running through her hair, and you have a late night Hitchcock marathon on the television. You’re amazed that she hasn’t fallen asleep yet, it’s after midnight and you know she has to be exhausted, but she’s adamantly refusing to go to sleep.

“Why on earth are you refusing to go to bed? I know that flying exhausts you, I don’t care if it was only a three hour flight.”

“Am I not allowed to watch a movie in peace?”She’s feigning annoyance, but you can feel her smiling against your legs.

“You’re insufferable, do you know that?”

She rolls over to give you a smirk, “I do indeed.” 

There’s something else though, lying just below the surface, she’s hiding it well, but you can sense it, there’s something she isn’t saying. “Helena, talk to me.”

“It’s nothing, darling,” and she tries to roll back over, but you grab her shoulder before she’s able to.

“No it’s not, talk to me. For the last hour, I’ve had this strange feeling that there’s something bothering you.”

She lets out a rough sigh of exasperation, “Bothering isn’t quite the word. It’s just so stupid, I don’t quite feel like embarrassing myself in front of you so early on in the weekend.”

“Tell. Me.”

“It’s just that sleep seems like such a wasted thing to do when my time with you is so short, and then I tell myself that it’s my fault that we don’t have more time, and then well you can imagine it’s a fairly ugly spiral of thoughts from there.”

“If sleep qualifies as a wasted thing during our time together, don’t you think that wallowing in what we don’t have yet is even more of a waste?”

“On that count you are absolutely right, however, telling my brain to stop thinking is rather a difficult task.”

“Babe listen, is this ideal? No. Do I hate that we don’t have more time? Absolutely. But if my options are a few scant hours here and there or not seeing you at all, I’ll take the difficult, messy option every single time.”

She shoots you a sidelong glance with a subtle quirk of an eyebrow, “Babe, really?”

You roll your eyes at her, and give a strand of her hair a small tug, “Yes, really. You’re going to be with me, you’re going to have to deal with the fact that I say odd things sometimes.”

“It’s not odd, darling. It’s endearing, just not something I’ve ever been called before is all.”

“This is really what you’re focusing on in all of this?”

“Well, if I have to deal with your odd words, you have to deal with the fact that I can be utterly maddening at times.”

“Now that’s something I’ve known for quite a while.” 

She chuckles, but you try to steer back towards the important end of your conversation, “I’m serious though. I choose this every time Helena, and maybe that’s wrong, and maybe I’m a horrible person because I know that you have other people, and another life, and stuff to sort through, but I can’t face living my life knowing you’re out there loving me, and I’m here loving you, and resign myself to not seeing you when I know that to be the case.”

“Myka, you do know that it isn’t going to be like this forever? That’s why I had to come here to tell you what I did. I needed you to know that I am completely serious about coming home. That even if we can’t really be together, as it were, right now, I’m committed to you, to us, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make that right, as soon as possible.”

“I know you will, but I’d be a liar if I said that the waiting isn’t hard,” and now you know that you’re the one holding something back, you just wonder if she can sense it, the way you did with her.

“Now who’s the one not saying what’s bothering them?” Well that answers that question, she’s just as attuned to you, as you are to her.

“Me, apparently.” You let out a sigh of resignation, and close your eyes, leaning against the headboard. You feel her sit up, but you can’t bring yourself to look at her. 

She takes your hand in hers, softly running her thumb over your knuckles, and the sensation is enough to make you start talking, though you keep your eyes closed, unsure if you’ll be able to say what you need to while looking at her, “It’s just…it’s what we talked about earlier. The fact that I’ve done this before, Helena, and don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that this time, it’s different, we aren’t sleeping together, and that is something, but I can’t help feeling like I’m still in the same position. Waiting. Sam told me a thousand times that he was going to leave his wife, that he would choose me, and it never happened, and I’m not sure if it would have even if he hadn’t died. And the reality is, the way I feel about you, it’s so heart-breakingly different, I love you so much I think it could stop me from breathing, and the thought that maybe, this thing we’re doing, ends up with me just waiting, and living for these small moments, while your other life keeps spinning without me, I can’t handle that.” You don’t even care that there are tears slipping down your cheeks, because this, this is what has been weighing on you more than anything, the possibility that she won’t come home. That this will linger between you, until you realize that all you’ll ever be is the other person, getting her love in small doses, but nothing else. 

Nothing but silence fills the room, and you think you might drown in it, and that’s when the rest of what you need to say comes out, “And the worst part is, I know I’d wait. I’d wait for you, until the gates of hell broke open, and there’s part of me that loves that I love you that much, because it’s something I never thought I’d have, but there’s the other part of me that hates it because it makes me feel weak and vulnerable, and terrified that one day you’ll wake up and realize that I’m not worth this whole mess, and the idea of having to face a world where you don’t love me is…”

You’ve never been more thankful to be interrupted, “Myka Bering, look at me,” you feel her weight shift so that she’s now sitting across your legs, knees against your hips, keeping you in place, her hands are against your cheeks, and you can do nothing but open your eyes to her. Her eyes are fierce, feeling as though they could bore straight into your soul. “I have made more mistakes in my life than I would care to remember, and far more in regards to you than I could ever possibly atone for. For too long, I have let myself lose you, and sure some of those times were out of my control, but I know woefully well what my life is like without you, and as I told you before, I am done running. I am done running away from how I feel about you, about how perfectly we fit together, even when we are driving each other completely insane. I am done running away from the one thing in this century that has made me realize that I can actually have a life again, that I can actually be happy. I have already lived far more days ignoring that I love you, than I ever thought I could bear, so you need to get it out of your head, right this instant, that there will ever come a day when you are living in a world where I don’t love you, madly, completely. And I swear to you, I will not be the person who strings you along, making you wait, I’ve already done that enough in the little time we have had together, and it’s over. I swear to you Myka, I am coming home. I am coming home in two weeks, I don’t care if the entire state of Wisconsin is on fire, I will be here, with you, and once I am, I pity the person who tries to make me leave you ever again.”

You can see it in her eyes, feel it in her touch that she means every single word, means it more than you ever could have possibly imagined, until you remember that it is her you’re dealing with, and she will never cease to amaze you. You want to say something, anything to compare with what she has just said to you, but only two words can escape your lips, “Kiss me.”

She doesn’t even hesitate, but closes what little space there actually was left between you, with lips that are just this side of trembling. It’s soft and intentional, like she’s trying to kiss away every fear that has ever gripped your heart, teasing out the broken parts of your soul with ever movement of her lips, and when you feel the tiniest drop of salt hit your lips, you have ceased to care if it’s your tears or hers, because nothing matters right now except her, and the way that she’s promising you everything without saying a single word.


	4. The Questions We Have to Ask

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well..this couldn't be all fluff and happiness. Complications were bound to occur, and occur they do.

She leaves and you ache. She calls and you pray for the hours and minutes until she’s here to slip by faster, willing the dimensions of time to shatter under the weight of how much you want her to just be here. Your phone buzzes and even in the smallest of messages, “How was your day?” “I miss you,” you feel another piece of yourself become entwined with her, until you aren’t sure you can survive another day without her by your side. You secretly prepare for her to come home. You know it’s crazy and presumptuous, but you start clearing out a side of your closet for her clothes. When everyone else is out, you put together a bookshelf to match yours, that she can fill with all her books and her things, because there’s no way all your stuff will fit on one, and you revel a little bit in imagining what her books will look like paired next to yours. 

You had talked about telling the others, about letting Artie know that this was coming, but decided it was better to deal with it once she was actually there. She wants to be able to talk to Artie, and most likely one or more of the Regents, face to face, so that nothing gets lost in translation. She’s nervous that they won’t allow her to come back, that too much has happened, but you try to assuage her fears every time she brings it up, which she’s been doing more and more often. Once again you find yourself having the exact same conversation you’ve had a thousand times over, as she drives home from work the Monday night of what is supposed be her last week in Boone.

“Helena, you did everything they asked you to do. You took the astrolabe, and made sure it was safe. Before that you saved all of us and the Warehouse. You saved me twice! What more can they expect?”

“Yes, but I didn’t return. My latest round of fickle choices might be one step too much for them. You know how they operate, Myka. They don’t tolerate ambivalence in this work.”

“But you weren’t ambivalent! It’s not like you stopped caring about the Warehouse, you just needed time, they’ll see that.”

“I wish I felt as certain as you apparently are.”

“We all will stand up for you Helena, you know that. I will back you with Artie and all of the rest, I’ll tell them you deserve to come back.”

“And I appreciate that darling, but I don’t want you to have to fight my battles for me.” There’s a twinge of frustration in her voice, and it makes you wince on the other end of the line.

“I don’t really consider defending you to the Regents fighting your battles for you. If I were going to them now before you’re even here and telling them what I think that might be another story.” You hate that your words sound biting, but you can’t help feeling that she’s being completely irrational.

“Myka, I know that. I just…”

“What? You just what?” Geez go easy, Bering. The time and the distance is beginning to wear on you, you’ve been fighting so hard to keep your anxiety at bay, and be patient, but the closer it gets, the worse you’ve been feeling. Your subconscious seeking to convince you that something will go wrong.

“I just don’t want you having to put yourself on the line, yet again for me, is all.”

“We’re all a family, you know that. We stand up for each other, I would do this for Pete or for Claudia—hell we did this for Claudia when she put Steve on the metronome. This is what we do.”

“It just seems like you all are always making allowances for me, and I wonder if the Regents will have grown tired of it.”

“Will you stop trying to spin this out into every single thing that could go wrong? You make it sound like coming back is going to be some huge burden for all of us, like you’re trying to give yourself an out. Like it’s too complicated to be something you actually want.” Shit. That was not what you meant to say…..

There’s nothing but silence on the other end of the phone, and you wonder if she’s actually hung up on you. You know it was out of line, she’s done so much over the last month to prove to you that this is in fact what she wants, you have no right to say something like that to her.

“Helena?”

You hear her clear her throat, and you kick yourself because you worry that you’ve actually been a big enough jackass to make her cry. “I’m here.”

“God, babe, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I know this is what you want. I’m just so tired, my head isn’t on straight.” 

She still doesn’t say anything and that fact alone is enough to strike fear into your very core. You realize you’ve both been idiots, sneaking around and thinking that just because you love each other the rest of this would be easy, when it isn’t. It’s going to be complicated and messy, and you have to be prepared for that.

You can’t handle the silence, so you just keep rambling into the empty space, “We will make this work. I know it’s going to be complicated at first, but you’ll have all the space and the time you need to figure things out. I’ll let you handle it. Whatever you need to be happy being here, we’ll do.”

“Myka, I have to go. I just got home, and I can’t exactly finish this conversation in the house, or stay in the driveway like this.”

“Right. Fine.” You know how utterly bitchy and defeated you sound, but you can’t even control it at this point. 

“Good night Myka,” and that definitively tells you how pissed she is, because there isn’t even the remotest sound of promise in her voice that you’ll hear from her later. 

“Good night.” You pause, but before she can hang up you stop her, “Helena…”

“What Myka?” God, she sounds so defeated and so angry, exhaustion and frustration laced through each syllable she speaks.

“I love you.”

She sighs in a way that sounds annoyed and it kills you, “I love you too,” it’s short, quick, almost rote, and then she’s gone. You throw your phone into your pillow, knees curling up to your chest, as the tears begin to slip down your cheeks.  
Pete knocks on your door to let you know dinner is ready but you beg off, telling him that you aren’t feeling great, which isn’t really a lie, you feel like hell. There’s been a pulsing headache behind your eyes since she hung up, and you don’t really feel like talking to anyone. You try to read, and can’t get through one paragraph without staring off into space. The empty bookcase seems to be mocking you, screaming at you that you were a fool to buy it, and you were stupid to think that she would show up and immediately move in with you, like you were this happy, normal couple, rather than the frustrating, complicated mess you really are. 

You hate yourself that you still doubt her, that after everything that has been said between the two of you, you still fear that Friday will come and you will stand by the door like some heartbroken teenager, waiting for a prom date that’s never going to show. You hate that this is how your week has started. This week was supposed to be spectacular, because the days would only tick down to when she’d be here for good, and now you fear that you’ve made all your doubts come to fruition, that you’ve chased her off, and there’s no way she’ll come back now. And you hate that you even think that she could be that fleeting, that you think one little fight could change everything between you two, yet you know this is what you do. You run away from each other, whenever things finally happen, it lasts for a passing second, and then you both turn tail and get the hell out because you’re both insane, and too insecure and afraid for your own good. 

You finally call the night a waste, shove your bookmark, a near tattered, already fading post-it note that usually makes you smile but tonight only seems to mock you, into your book, and get a shower, willing your pain to burn away under the scorching heat. It’s a fruitless effort, but you appreciate the momentary numbness. You collapse onto your bed, wishing you could just sleep away everything that has happened. You figure you won’t even be able to sleep, but thankfully, at some point, you ebb away, losing yourself to the dark and the rain that has starting pounding against your windows. 

Something shakes you from sleep, and you wake up heart pounding, trying to figure out what happened. It takes you a second to collect yourself, before you realize that there’s a light in your room that usually isn’t there, and an odd noise. Clarity hits you like a freight train when you realize it’s your phone. You fumble for it, hardly registering the name on the ID before answering, not wanting it to click over to your voicemail. 

You try to shake the grogginess out of your voice, to sound put together and awake, “Hello?”

“Myka?” You can barely hear her, she’s so quiet and she’s crying, that is immediately evident, and it’s enough to careen all the tiredness from your brain.

“Hey…thank God it’s you. Babe, I am so sorry. I am so so so sorry…” and without any conscious realization of when it happened, there are tears on your own cheeks. “Helena, I never should have said any of that, it was totally out of line.”

“I just wish this wasn’t so complicated….” She sounds so small, and you realize that in the face of love and heartache, that’s what all of us are reduced to.

“I know, but hey it wouldn’t be us if it wasn’t right?” You try to laugh, and thankfully she does too.

Through a shuddering breath she says, “Right, Bering and Wells…creating problems, complicating the world.”

“That’s us.”

“It doesn’t have to be though, does it? I mean I can’t believe that it’s always going to be this complicated.”

“It won’t be. It was bound to be like this until we both stopped acting foolish and realized that we have to stop fighting the world, and just find each other and be happy.”

“You do make me happy, I hope you know that Myka. I know how hard I have made this for you,” and you hear her take another shuttering breath, soaking up a sob.

The sound makes your heart ache, and you hate that your words did this to her. You try to soothe her through your tone of voice, but more than anything you wish that she was here and you could hold her, but then again if she was here you wouldn’t have been in the position to say such a stupid ass thing in the first place, “I do know, I feel it every time you look at me, and every time I hear your voice, I know, and I never knew I could be happy like this, until you, but you don’t get to be the only one taking the blame for how difficult this is. We have both done our fair share in making this hard.” 

She pauses for a long time, and you can tell she’s building up to something, that this is why she is calling you at two in the morning, so you just wait. 

“I haven’t told Nate I’m leaving….”

Ok, not what you were expecting her to say, but you don’t say anything, not yet, because there has to be a reason she’s saying this to you.

“I haven’t known how, how do you just pull the rug out from under someone’s life? And I know I’ve been putting it off, and I’ve hated myself for it, and so tonight when you said that…about whether this was something I wanted, it just, it made me panic, it made me second guess myself, like maybe I wasn’t telling Nate because I was uncertain, or something completely foolish like that. And I knew that if I told you that I hadn’t told him, that’s exactly what you would think, and then to actually hear you say that you already were worried that I didn’t want to come back, that there’s part of you that still thinks I won’t…God, I’m not making any sense. I’m sorry…”

There’s so many things that you want to say, but you know you have to be very delicate with it, “No, it’s ok. I get it.” You don’t want to ask, but you have to. “Helena, have you not told him because you don’t want to come back?”

Her response is immediate, “No. No it really isn’t. All it is, is being so tired of hurting people, and I hate that I’m going to hurt him and Adelaide. I’m just trying to delay the inevitable, but it has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with my desire to be with you.”

You release the breath you were holding, “Ok then. That’s something I totally understand, I really do. So it’s alright. They’ve been a huge part of your life, it’s understandable that you don’t want to hurt them, I can’t be angry with you for that.”  
“I appreciate that, probably more than I could say.” There’s a weighty pause, that you don’t quite know how to fill. “ Myka? You do believe I want to come back don’t you?”

It’s a loaded question and you both know it. 

She feels you hesitating, “You can be honest with me. I can take it, I assure you.”

You take in a deep shuddering breath, choosing your words carefully, “I believe that you love me. I think there’s a part of me that is almost shocked how much I believe that, and I do believe that you want us to be together, which means that yes I do believe you want to come back. But I can’t help being worried that something is going to happen that makes you pause or reconsider. I’ve seen the things that the Warehouse has put you through, and I’ve lived through the things that have pulled and pushed us so hard that I’m surprised we’re in one piece, so on some level I’m worried that fear of what might come at the hands of this life will keep you from me. I don’t for one second think that anything that might make you second guess has anything to do with me—I’m more certain of us and what we could be together, than I ever thought I could be. It’s the other stuff, the artifacts, the life-threatening things, the Regents, Artie, the difficulty that comes with this job, this life, that has me worried you won’t come back.”

“If there was something I could do to assuage those fears darling, I would do it in a heartbeat. Alas, I fear I can’t, because you’ve known from the beginning that that is precisely what has my mind tied up in knots as well. What I will say though, is that you, my dear, sweet Myka, are well worth pushing through those fears. The knowledge that all of that comes with the amazing benefit of being with the woman I love every single day, makes it well worth all the anxiety that has been plaguing me about returning to regular Warehouse living. You make everything else seem quite trivial in comparison. It does ease my mind knowing that you have no doubts about my feelings for you though, that is the one thing I cannot tolerate you doubting.”

“You do need to know how sorry I am for what I said earlier though. I am Helena, it was out of line.”

“Thank you, though I must say, it’s not exactly surprising, I think we both are quite near our wits end with waiting. It was bound to occur that we would take it out on each other, regrettable as that may be.”

“So we’re ok?”

“We are spectacular, though I have a feeling that you won’t be thinking as such in the morning when you wake up completely deprived of sleep. I am sorry for the lateness, but I couldn’t bring myself to go to bed without fixing this.”

“It’s ok. If it’s you on the other end, I’ll take the wake up call…even if it’s hours before I should even be remotely close to being awake.”

“Only for a few more days, and then when I can’t sleep I can simply roll over and wake you up in much more enjoyable ways, rather than with an obnoxious cell phone noise.”

“You’re flirting with me. It’s almost 3 am and you’re flirting with me. That might be the cruelest thing you could do to me.”

Your stomach does a small flip at the laugh that comes through the line, “I’m very sorry darling, but yes I am. I couldn’t quite resist the temptation.”

“Just promise you’ll make it up to me.”

“I promise darling.”

“Four more days…I suppose I can handle that.”

“Four more days,” and finally you hear a tone of happiness and hope in her voice. She doesn’t realize it, but that more than anything eases the fears still bouncing around your mind in the midst of the desire. “Now I really should let you get back to sleep.”

“Ugh, I suppose…though my ability to sleep might be completely gone after the imagery you’ve just put in my head.”

“Somehow I’m sure you’ll…manage. Good night Myka.”   
“Good night Helena. Sleep tight.”

“I shall, because I will be thinking of you. I love you,” and this time those words sound sweet and comforting. They aren’t rote or clipped, they’re beautiful, ringing through the line with truth and wonder.

“I love you too, so much.”

“Goodbye darling. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

“Technically, it already is morning.’

“Semantics at 3 am? Honestly, I’d prefer the flirting….”

“Goodbye Helena.”

Her laugh curls around the small “bye” she whispers before disconnecting. You lean back into your pillows, feeling lighter than you have in days. It feels good to have gotten some of the weight off of your chest, and you do feel like some of your fear has ebbed away. This, the love you two have for each other, it makes it all worth it. Being together will make the rest of the consequences and issues to deal with more tolerable. It will be so much easier when you’re simply together and able to fix things and deal with them face to face, rather than across the miles, plus she made a marvelous point about being able to wake you up in much more exciting ways…and that was well worth the wait.


	5. Coming to an End and Starting at the Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's finally time for Helena to come home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally two shorter chapters that I decided to put together, because I felt like it read better as a complete piece. Hopefully that worked...enjoy everyone :-)

It always takes a little while to get back to even keel after a fight, and you two aren’t immune to that fact. It’s not that things are bad, they’re just a little off. It doesn’t matter that you said you were good, and you talked through it, and came out on the other side, in the immediate after, there always feels like there’s something hanging in the background. Words come a little bit slower, you’re just this side of hesitant to reach out, and you both are dancing around each other wanting to make sure you each have enough space to down shift. You spend Tuesday barely present to each other. There are the usual messages, the checking ins, the how has x, y, z at work been. There’s the calls after work, the rehashing of days and details, but the little in-between things, they’re absent. The you’ll never believe what stupid thing just happened, the I miss you’s, the subtle flirting, that’s not there, but you don’t panic, because you know that what happened between you yesterday wasn’t small or trivial, it was significant and hurtful, despite the reconciliation, so you appreciate the time you’re being given, and you recognize that the space you’re giving her is necessary. 

The hesitation comes to a hurtling stop on Wednesday afternoon though. You’re in St. Louis attempting to chase down Stan Musial’s baseball bat, which has left Pete a complete wreck of boyhood exuberance, when your phone buzzes. 

“You’ll never guess what I’m doing right now.”

You’re sitting in a coffee shop, going through recent newspapers detailing the odd circumstances that keep finding baseballs careening into people out of nowhere and causing quite a bit of damage . You’re trying to figure out if they’re all related, if this is some weird baseball-abetted vendetta, or if it’s just a random someone goofing around with a toy that don’t know how to control The message is a much needed break, you feel like your eyes are losing their ability to focus.

“Well….you should be working, but that would seem too horrendously obvious of an answer.”

“It is work, of a sort, but no I am not at work.”

“Why?”

“I begged out early, because I had other things, things you’re supposed to be guessing, to attend to.”

“I honestly have no idea…”

“Always so serious on the job, Agent Bering. No room for indulging the woman you love while on the case…”

You can’t help but laugh at her ability to make playfulness come across even through a text message. “What can I say, I am a horribly boring person.”

“Hardly.”

“So are you going to tell me what you’re doing?”

“Well, I shouldn’t since you refuse to play my game, but alas I love you too much to not tell you. I am packing.”

The word hits you like an electric shock. “Packing. Like packing, packing?”

“Serious and oh so eloquent ;-) Yes darling, like packing, packing. As in, I’m putting all my worldly possessions into boxes that will hopefully fit in my woefully small car, packing.”

You don’t even really know what to say, because as much as you know you shouldn’t be shocked, you kind of are. It’s like you knew somewhere in your brain that she was coming home, but it isn’t until now that the reality of that fact sinks in. She saves you from figuring out how to actually type out a response to this news by continuing the conversation through an actual call. 

You answer immediately, voice full of amazement that you know she can hear, “You’re packing.”

“I am darling. Though I have no idea how all of this is going to fit in my car.”

“Well you can always ship some things if you need to.” Before you can fully drift into the logistics of planning, it strikes you that you’ve failed to ask the most important question here, “So wait, if you’re packing, does that mean...” you don’t quite know how to say it.

“Does it mean that I told Nate? Yes, it does.” She always seems to know when you’re grappling with finding the right words, and she blissfully knows when to supply them for you.

“When?”

“Last night. He got home late, and I realized that it was ridiculous to keep putting it off, because why on earth should I be putting off something that ultimately leads me to being where I am happiest.” She doesn’t add the ‘with you’ but you can feel it’s implication at the end of her sentence.

“How’d he take it?”

“Amazingly well actually. I suppose in the midst of all of this, I’ve failed to mention that things have not been exactly comfortable here since you and Pete came. The shock of discovering who I actually am, on top of the fact that it’s been extremely obvious how unhappy I have been since you left, it hasn’t made for a happy home life really. I think he might have been a bit relieved actually.” You can hear the smirk playing across her lips with that, and it makes you laugh despite the seriousness of what you’re actually discussing.

“Why would he be relieved?”

“Oh come on Myka, you of all people know I am not the most pleasant person to be around when I’m unhappy. Would you want to live with that?”

You know she’s kidding but you can’t help yourself, “Well, I must say I don’t expect you to be completely happy every second of every day when you’re here, so then yes, I would, I do want to live with that. I’ll take you happy, unhappy, whatever way I can get you.”

She’s silent for a moment, and you smile because you think you might have stunned her a bit, “I think you might have actually rendered me speechless with that one darling. Though I must say, that if I am with you, even the worst moments, the unhappiest of moments, won’t be all that bad.”

It’s deliriously cheesy, but you don’t even care, because for the first time this feels so real. For the first time you can actually start to see a bit of your future, not just some unknown blur ahead, but something real and tangible. Yet, you know that telling Nate comes with other complications, “How about Adelaide? Does she know?”

“She does,” and you can hear the sadness that creeps into her voice. “We told her this morning. She cried, told me she didn’t want me to go, which was awful, but then she said she also wanted us to be happy, so maybe it would be ok if me not living there made that happen. She’s way too bright for her own good that one.”

“I’m sorry. I know leaving her, it’s not easy. I hate that you have to.”

“Nothing to apologize for. Nate, in an amazing display of nobility, said I’m more than welcome to still communicate with her. He acknowledged that I’d become rather a large part of her life, and just because we aren’t together anymore doesn’t mean that I can’t still talk to her.”

“Wow, that’s kind of….impressive.”

“I rather thought the same.”

“Are you going to? Stay in contact, I mean.”

“I want to. I mean I’m sure it will be odd and probably a bit awkward, but she’s important to me, and so that makes the strangeness of all of this worth it.”

“I’m glad. She’s a big part of your life, I wouldn’t want you having to sacrifice that.” You can’t bring yourself to finish the sentence the way it needs to be finished, ‘for me.' 

“Myka, you are worth a world of sacrifice. We are more than worth it. The fact that I get you, a life with you is worth everything. That I still somehow don’t fully lose Adelaide is simply an added bonus.”

“I love you. You know that right?”

“I do, and I love you. It would seem the future is upon us.”

“It would seem so…”

There’s a meaning-laden pause, both of you contemplating the fact that you’re finally entering into a new beginning. She finally breaks the silence, bringing you back to reality.

“So, St. Louis. How’s that going? Do you think you’ll actually even be home on Friday?”

“We will. We’ve got a couple really good leads, I think we should be done by tomorrow, and if we’re not, I’ll, I don’t know, escape in the middle of the night and let Pete deal with it.”

“Both of us shirking work responsibilities in one week may be a sign of an impending apocalypse.”

“Didn’t you just say it was worth the sacrifice?”

She laughs, and you love her even more. You love that this maddening, amazing woman on the other end of the line is your future. “I did indeed. Well then, in the interest of making sure you are indeed home on time, without leaving Pete to his own devices, I am going to hang up, and let you get back to work, and I am going to continue packing. Remind me to stop buying books, they are horrendous to pack.”

“That is one thing I refuse to do. No one gets to stop buying books, ever, especially you.”

“Well, then you can pack them for me, the next time they require boxing.”

“Deal, because I’m never letting you leave, therefore, I will never have to follow up on that promise.”

“Ah the stubbornness of the woman I love. Get some work done darling, call me later, let me know how it’s going.”

“I will. Good luck with the boxes.”

“Ugh, thank you. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Knowing the sooner you finished the case, the sooner you got home to all of this happening, made wrapping things up infinitely easier. By Thursday afternoon, you’re on a flight home, with the bat in tow. It was being wielded by a shunned minor league baseball player who was using it to take out everyone who ever had told him he couldn’t hack it, now that he had in fact proven them correct. You’re not sure you’ve ever been happier to be going home, but then you realize you’ve never been coming home to Helena, and that makes all the difference.

 

Friday dawns with sun shining and the lingering breeze of night that promises fall is around the corner. You wake up a half an hour before your alarm, and you can’t even try to force yourself back to sleep. Going for a run seems like the best option for your early morning, plus it will help burn off the extra energy that is coursing through your veins already. Your feet pound the beaten track through the woods behind Leena’s and with each step you feel like you’re another step closer to Helena. You don’t know how you’re going to get through the day. You pray there are no pings, yet you know a day of inventory will be interminable with the wait. Helena only has to go into the lab in the morning to make sure all her files are in order, and then she’s free, seeing as there’s no point in getting involved in any new cases when she wouldn’t be around to finish them. She packed her car last night, so she said she was planning on leaving by 11. Despite that though, it’s still almost a 12 hour drive, so you know you have hours to get through before she’s even remotely close. The late arrival will help with your other plans though. You decided last night that it would be best if she got there after everyone went to bed. No need to go into the whole conversation late at night anyway, this way she could get up and start fresh with everyone on Saturday, and there’s the added bonus that for just a few hours you get her to yourself before the chaos that her return will bring starts to reign down. 

The day drags on just as you expected it would. There’s nothing pinging, and Artie has sent you off to the Franklin aisle for inventory. Thankfully, it’s at least interesting, but it doesn’t make the minutes tick by any faster. Your phone rings just as you’re thinking about taking a break and grabbing an early lunch.

You can’t hide the excessive glee in your voice, you try, but you can’t, “Hey, please tell me you’re in the car.”

“I am, though not nearly as early as I had hoped. There were a few questions about the cases that are still open, so I had to go over them with my replacement.”

“They’ve hired someone already?”

“Apparently. Her first day was today, so I guess that way nothing will fall through the cracks with the cases. Oh well, no longer my problem, now my only problem is the infinite amount of miles between you and myself.”

“I know, I’m stuck doing inventory, which we both know is about the slowest job in the history of the world, I feel like I’ve been here for hours, and it’s been like three. But hey, maybe getting here later will help make sure everyone is asleep when you get here.”

“I thought about that as well. I hope it does, I’m quite looking forward to it just being us for whatever tiny remainder of the evening we will have when I get there.” 

“I can’t believe you’re actually on your way…”

“I know! Are you quite ready for me darling? I’ve been told I’m rather a pain to live with at times.”

“The only person who ever said that was Pete, and he was teasing. Plus, look who’s talking about being a pain to live with.” The lilting laugh that drifts through the phone makes you wish that there was a way to just artifact her here already, “Seriously though, yes I could not be more ready for you to be here. What about you? Are you ready for this?” It’s a more serious question for her, than it was for you, and you wait with bated breath for her answer.

“I am. I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to just being with you Myka, without all the phone calls and excessive planning. I’m ready to simply exist with you, as odd as that sounds. As for everything else, I think I’m ready. I’ve kind of planned out what I’ll say to the Regents and to Artie, and that’s all I can do really. If things don’t go well, I figure I have plenty of skills to find myself work somewhere, I am rather talented you know.”

“That you are, but I’m sure it won’t come to that. We need the extra hands around here, with Claudia taking on more and more as future caretaker, it leaves her less time in the field.”

“Well, we shall see what happens. For now, I’m choosing to focus on us, on how incredible it will be being able to actually see you everyday. Let alone the fact that I will finally be able to take you on a proper date.”

“A date huh?”

“Yes, darling, a date. I realize we’ve started in a rather, shall we say, unconventional manner,” you give her credit for ignoring your shout of laughter at that, “but I intend on doing this right, Myka, on doing the things we should have done eons ago. So yes, I have great plans for many dinners and picnics and any number of silly trivial things that make relationships wonderful.”

You actually swoon a little at that, like honest to God swoon, eyes rolling, knees going weak, breath catching in your chest, because good Lord this woman is incredible, and the fact that she’s thought it out so much, well it just makes it all the better. “I really want to make fun of your describing our start as unconventional, but I can’t, because well, that sounds spectacular. Though I must say, having told you I love you before a proper date makes me seem a bit crazy.”

“Not crazy, unconventional darling.”

“Right. Because ya know unconventional totally covers saying I love you first, then sharing a hotel room for multiple weekends, moving in together, and only then going on a first date.”

“Which one of the two of us is a writer? I think I picked a marvelous word for it.”

“You always have to fall back on the writer excuse. I’m never going to win an argument am I?”

“Never.” She hears you laughing and you hear her give a small sigh that sounds completely contented, “I really cannot wait to see you Myka.”

“Me neither. Drive faster.”

“I would but I do believe you would like me to arrive in one piece.”

“True. Alright babe, well I need to run up to the office and grab some lunch, so I can continue my enthralling afternoon of inventory.”

“I would take inventory over an afternoon of driving any day.”

“Yes but you’re driving towards me, so that has to count for something,” you can’t believe how much you keep sounding like some giddy teenager, but you can’t help yourself. This is what you’ve been waiting for for so long, you no longer feel in control of your responses to reality.

“It counts for everything…”

There’s that swooning feeling again, God this woman was going to be the death of you, in the best way possible. “I love you,” you let it linger there a little bit, letting the words wash over her, “drive safe, and call me later.”

You can hear her smiling, “I shall and I shall, I love you too.

She calls you throughout the day, breaking up the monotony for both of you, and you can’t help but realize that no matter how many times she calls you can’t wait to hear her voice, and the warmth that sends through your body makes you feel like you’re finally where you were always meant to be. It’s the call that comes across your phone a little after midnight though that makes your heart pound in your chest so hard you think you might pass out.

“Hey babe—getting close?”

“I am about five miles outside of Univille, so I should be there in about fifteen minutes.” You think you can hear the same giddiness in her voice that is rattling through your body with those words. “Do I have any chance of actually getting into the house unnoticed?”

You say a silent word of thanks that she will in fact be able to get in without arousing suspicion, “Amazingly, yes. Pete had a date tonight, and as horrifying as it is, he sent me a text saying to not expect him home,” you hear her give a small snort of laughter, “and once again Claudia and Steve pulled ping duty, Artie shipped them off to Wyoming earlier tonight, so that just leaves Artie and Leena who are both pleasantly asleep.”

“It would seem fate is on our side then.”

“For once, for tonight, it would seem so.”

“Well then, I shall see you in a few minutes darling.”

“Sounds good. I’ll be here waiting.”

You can’t keep yourself from going to check and make sure you look alright, for almost 1 am you think you actually look pretty damn good. You take a cursory look around your room, still feeling slightly nervous about the assumption you’ve jumped to about her staying in your room, you just hope it doesn’t freak her out, but as she said, unconventional. Looking at the empty bookcase and the drawers you know you’ve cleared out you say to no one in particular, “Yup, unconventional would seem to fit.” You head downstairs, quietly, to wait for her. You go into the kitchen and get a pot of tea going, figuring by the time she gets there, it’ll be near ready. You’re pulling out the tea you had surreptitiously bought at the store, when you hear tires on the driveway. It takes every ounce of control you have to not slam the tea down and run to the door, but in the interest of trying to be quiet, you set it down and pad as slowly as you can to the front of the house. You open the door, and lean against the jamb, trying to seem casual, despite the butterflies that are circling your stomach like a tornado. You didn’t expect to be this nervous, but you are. Your hands are shaking a little bit where you have them crossed around your hips, and you’re breathing in shallow gulps. She gets out of the car, and she looks far more amazing than anyone should after spending twelve hours in a car, and before you know it she’s right there, standing in front of you, small bag in her hand, and a devastatingly beautiful smile on face.

You know your smile mirrors hers as you say quietly, “Welcome home babe.”

She leans up on her tiptoes to place a small, chaste kiss on your lips, “Thank you darling.”

You take her bag from her, and stand back so she can get into the house. You shut the door quietly behind you, “We’ll get the rest of your stuff in the morning.”

“That’s what I figured. I just put the things I’d need for the night in there.”

You didn’t expect it to feel this strange, but it does a little, adjusting to the new permanence of it all, and you can tell she feels it too, standing, unsure of what to do in the foyer. “I made some tea, I’ll just go put this upstairs.”

You’re doing an extremely poor job of hiding your nerves, and per usual she glides into the situation as the face of calm and composure. She grabs your hand before you can turn towards the stairs, “Darling, leave the bag there. Tea sounds wonderful, but let’s just get it and take it upstairs.”

“Right, yeah ok.”

You set the bag down, and she takes it as an opportunity to grasp your other hand. It comes as no surprise that she has adjusted and found her bearings well before you have, “Myka, breathe. You’re making me nervous just looking at you. I’m here, I am deliriously happy to be here, it’s ok.”

You blush slightly, “I know, sorry, I have no idea why I’m nervous, sorry.” Good Lord Myka, stop rambling.

“No need to apologize. It’s just going to take a little time to adjust to the newness of all of this, it’s understandable,” but before you can respond she curls your hands towards her, thus drawing you into her, and once she kisses you, the nerves dissipate. The familiarity of the way she feels against you, the soft wave of vanilla that fills the air around you, it makes you remember that this isn’t something to be nervous about, it’s something to revel in. 

She breaks away ever so slightly, and you whisper against her lips, in an almost awed tone, “You’re home.”

“I am,” and she smiles, and in that moment you know it’s all going to be alright, because she’s here and now your life together can actually start. 

You get the tea, and head upstairs. It’s only when you reach the threshold of your room that your nerves return in full force, and you feel like you’ve walked into a brick wall. You stop before she can take another step, turning towards her with a cloud of doubt in your eyes, and unconsciously your bottom lip curls under your teeth. 

“Myka what is it?” She looks absolutely perplexed at your apparent inability to move.

Your eyes dart around, looking anywhere but at her, “It’s just, I think I’ve done something stupid. At the time it didn’t seem stupid, but now that you’re here, I feel like an ass. I jumped to a conclusion that maybe I shouldn’t have, and I should’ve just asked you, rather than just doing it,” you could keep going but she stops you.

“Myka, you’re rambling. Just tell me,” she’s smiling at you though, and you wonder if she knows. After all, it’s not like you’re steering her towards her old room, but quite distinctly towards yours. 

“It’d be easier if I just showed you,” you hang your head and open your door, letting her walk in first. The bookshelf is one of the first things you can see when you walk in, and from the way your closet door is angled you can just see inside to the empty space you cleared for her. You can see her eyes roaming, taking in the subtle changes since the last time she was here almost a year ago. The way there’s more space open, space meant for her, and seeing her here amongst that space emboldens you, “I know I shouldn’t have assumed, and we can absolutely have Leena set up your old room if you want, it’s still there, I think Pete and Claudia turned it into a bit of a gaming space, but they can clear that out, no problem. I just figured, well, I just figured that it might be nice for us to have our own space. I mean I realize it’s technically my space, but it can be our space.”

When she turns towards you she brings you up short, because there’s a small sheen of tears in her eyes, “Darling you’re rambling again.”

“Sorry…” and all you can do is look at the floor.

“Myka, if you think I had any intention of being in the same house as you, and even pretending to want to be anywhere else than with you, then I may question your sanity.”

It draws a laugh from your lips, “I just I want you to be comfortable, and I realized after I did all this, that maybe you would have been comfortable making your own decision about where you would actually be living.”

“I am exactly where I want to be. Though remember I did warn you I am a bit of a bear to live with.”

“You did, and if you remember I said that I didn’t care.” 

There’s a pause where she continues to take in everything you’ve done, “You bought me a bookshelf…”

“Yeah…well I figured it would be safer than trying to fit all of our books onto one. It might get ugly.”

“Very true.”

Knowing she’s happy with things drives you to tell her everything else you’ve prepped so she can settle in and feel like she’s at home, “So there’s the bookshelf, which obviously we can get more, if we need more. I shuffled around the closet a bit, so you have an entire half to yourself, and I cleared out half the dresser for you too. At some point we’ll probably need more space for clothes, but I figured we could always reclaim the furniture in your old room too. Plus, there’s one other thing…” She hasn’t noticed the biggest change because it’s behind the door, the only space where it would fit unfortunately. You turn around to close the door, and reveal the part of all of this that was the hardest to maneuver.

Her jaw drops, which is the goal you were aiming for, because she looks completely shocked in the best way possible, “Is that…”

“It is.”

“How on earth did you get it here?”

“It wasn’t easy trust me, but I figured if there was one thing you needed to make you feel more at home, it was your actual, own writing desk.”

“Myka, I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. Like I said, I want you to feel like this is your home, and I want this room to somehow in the midst of all the other people that we share this house with, to feel like our place, and for me part of what makes us, well us, is that we can just be ourselves with each other, which includes you being able to write. Is that weird?”

“Darling, it is perfect. I could not have said it better myself. Thank you, for all of this, for somehow always knowing exactly what I need.” 

“You’re welcome,” you can’t help the last vestige of nerves that are tugging at the back of your brain. “Are you sure you’re ok with all of this? I know we didn’t really talk about it.”

“I am more than ok with it. In all honesty, I could not be happier. Myka, I love you, and I realize that we’ve done this completely backwards, but it would seem rather foolish for me to have all my things in one room, when I never had any intention of ever actually sleeping anywhere but next to you.”

“Unconventional right?”

“Exactly,” and she laughs and she kisses you and it’s perfect. “Now, I am going to get out of these godforsaken clothes because I have been in them far too long, and then I am going to curl up in our bed, with that cup of tea, and most likely sleep for far longer than I should.”

You love the way she purposefully emphasizes “our,” like it’s a fact and a promise at the same time.


	6. A Moment of Conventionality

Saturday dawns by sending small, restless beams of sunlight in through your curtains, at just the right angle to filter through your eyelids. You stir against the arm that is clutched tightly around your waist, and you feel hair tickle against the back of your neck, only to be quickly replaced by a soft brush of lips. You fidget enough to encourage her to release her grip slightly so that you can roll into the embrace and face her. Her eyes are still closed, but there’s a smile playing against her lips. You kiss her lightly, momentarily awed by how beautiful she looks, hair tussled, slight traces of makeup still visible on her eyelids, utterly still, a rarity for this woman who is usually vibrating with activity. 

The words escape your lips before you can even think about it, “You’re beautiful.”

That gets her to open her eyes, “Good morning to you too darling.”

You wrap one arm around her waist, tucking the other under your head, “How’d you sleep?”

She stretches ever so slightly under your arm, “Better than I have in weeks, honestly.”

“Ready for today?”

She crinkles her forehead, “If you’re referring to my intention of spending the entire day right here, just like this, then yes. If, however, you’re referring to the reality of talking to Artie and whatever Regents choose to show up, then no.”

“I think I prefer your intentions to reality.”

“As do I, believe me.”

“Just think though, once you talk to them all the worrying and stress about it will be over.”

“True. Ugh,” she throws the arm that was over your waist across her eyes, “I suppose it would be easier to just get it over with.”

“I’d suggest showering first.”

The look she shoots you from underneath her arm is endearingly annoyed, “Yes, that was rather my plan darling.”

“Just checking,” you give her waist a little squeeze. “Towels are in the cabinet next to the sink.”

“It seems wildly unfair that I have to get up, while you get to stay here.”

“I would say I could join you, but somehow I don’t think that would be conducive to actually getting anything done this morning.”

“Oh certain things would get done darling, but I do believe you’re right,” her voice is dripping with seduction, and you wonder how she can manage to do that even when you know there’s stress and worry racing around her mind. Before you can say anything in return, she throws the covers back and bounds out of bed, retrieving her bag in the process.

When you go to get ready, she’s still fixing her makeup in the mirror, and before you know what’s hit you, you feel your heart fluttering in your chest and suddenly you can’t catch your breath. You think she’s missed it, but you’re beginning to know better than to think she misses anything you do, “Myka, what is it?”

You shake your head, chasing the reverie and fog away, “It’s nothing.”

She continues to apply her mascara, but shoots you a sidelong glance in the mirror, “Myka…”

You busy yourself with turning on the shower and pulling out a new towel for yourself so you don’t have to look at her when you say it, “It’s stupid, really. It’s just seeing all your stuff in here, seeing your toothbrush next to mine, I think it kind of hit me that you’re really here.”

You still haven’t looked at her, but as you lean down to check the temperature of the water, you feel her arms snake around your waist, pulling you up to lean against her. Her chin rests against your shoulder, and she places a small kiss on your cheek, “There is nothing stupid about that, as I had rather the same experience when I realized I was using your hair dryer this morning. Apparently, the newness of all of this has left us both rather helplessly sentimental.” You feel her small laugh against your skin, “I cannot tell you how happy I am to be here, Myka, that my toothbrush gets a spot next to yours.”

You spin in her arms, “You’re teasing me. We’re having a moment and you tease me.”

“Of that I am woefully guilty.” She kisses your forehead, and breaks away from you, “Now darling get in the shower, so we can get the rest of what is bound to be an awkward morning over with,” she urges you back towards the shower with a small tap on your ass and a wink, as she leaves you on your own to get ready.

You find her sitting at her writing desk when you emerge, and you pause against the door of the bathroom, to take a moment to simply appreciate how incredible it is to see her there writing, “Working away already are we?”

She turns to you, a hesitant smile on her face, “Not quite, I was just getting some of my thoughts down on paper, in case they flee my mind when I’m with the Regents. Figured it would be good to have a backup plan.”

“Good idea.” You can hear people shuffling around downstairs, and you notice her glancing at the door, “Well shall we get this over with?”

She lets out a long sigh, “I suppose so.”

Before you open the door, you still her movements with a small grasp of her wrist, “Helena, whatever happens today, we’ll make it work, I promise. No matter what anyone else says, I am glad you’re here and nothing is going to change that. But I really do think it’s going to be ok.”

“Thank you darling.”

“I love you, remember that.”

“Always. I love you too.”

You slide your arms around her neck to give her one more kiss before the delicate walls you’ve built around yourselves for the last month come crumbling down. She holds you tight around your waist, like she never wants to let go, but eventually you do and she does, and you open to the door to face whatever the morning may bring.

 

The effect is almost immediate, and before you know what’s happened, Artie has whisked her away to the Warehouse, mumbling something about Mrs. Fredric, and Pete is badgering you about how the hell you managed to keep it quiet for so long. You answer his questions as calmly as possible, and try your best to ignore the snarky comments that come along with his realization that you’re together. You’re probably able to tolerate them more because your mind is too focused on what might be going on miles away, whether the Regents will be understanding, whether Artie will be a pain in the ass, whether this will end up blowing up in both of your faces. Somewhere in the midst of all the chaos, Pete calls Claudia and Steve to tell them. Claudia is ecstatic, which gives you a modicum of relief. Steve, per usual, doesn’t say much, but tells you he’s happy for you both.  
Artie has instructed both you and Pete to stay put at the B&B, though the look he shot you when he left indicated that it wouldn’t be long before you were the one facing the Regents, to answer for your role in Helena’s return, as well as your obvious role in your relationship, which you’re sure they know about by now. Pete does his best to keep you distracted, but before long your fidgeting and anxiety is too much even for him. He sends you out for a run to burn off your excess energy, but it does little to help, if anything the adrenaline has only served to heighten all of your senses. 

Eventually, you simply can’t take it any longer, and you pull out your phone, fairly certain that she’ll never be allowed to answer a call, but will hopefully be able to at least find a quick second to answer a text.

“How’s it going over there babe?”

You’re shocked when she responds almost immediately.

“About as you would expect. You’ve amazingly caught me during a small break. They’re all out of the room talking, consulting about my sanity I’m sure.”

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how pissed off are they? Which who is ‘they’ anyway?”

“Mrs. Fredric, Pete’s Mom, and Kosan.”

“Wow, pulled out the big guns for you huh?”

“Apparently, and to answer your other question, the sense I get is that they’re confused more than anything. The only person who seems angry is Artie.”

“And let me guess, that anger is directed at me?” You inwardly flinch at how you’re sure Artie feels. You so rarely keep things from him, and something like this, you can imagine he’s not taking it well. That you kept Helena’s return from him would be a gross breach of trust to him. 

“Unfortunately, I believe so darling. Maybe we should have told him before…”

“You’re probably right…but there’s nothing we can do about that now I guess. So what are they confused about?”

“My motives it would seem. They seem mostly curious why I’m returning now, and what makes this time different. They don’t necessarily seem hesitant to let me return, as they are wary that it won’t stick.”

“What did you tell them?” This is a question you know has far more implications than just Helena’s job at the Warehouse, as it would seem to have quite a bit to do with your relationship as well. 

“I told them much of what I told you that first night in Boone darling, maybe with a little less commentary on my feelings for you, but essentially that I am done running, and that I ran before out of fear.”

“But you told them about us too?”

“I did. I didn’t think it was really advisable to keep that hidden, let alone the fact that Artie didn’t exactly shy away from mentioning your role in all of this.”

“And how’d they take that?”

“That is the portion that amazingly they were amenable to. Apparently they seem to think that you have a rather grounding influence on me darling.”

“What can I say, it’s one of my many talents.”

“Indeed…”

“So they seem ok with us being together, but they aren’t sure whether they should let you return to your job…”

“That would seem to be where we’re at for now, but before they come back in, I have to tell you to not make any plans for the evening, I forgot to mention that before I left this morning.”

“Why? Not that I really had anything planned….”

“Because darling, I am taking you out, once they let me leave that is.”

“Taking me out huh? Is this part of your going on a proper date plan?” You can feel your heart fluttering in your chest, even as you tease her.

“Absolutely. “

“Well, I suppose I can’t really say no to that…though Pete had mentioned movie night, I might need some persuading…”

“You are insufferable, but if you’d rather spend the evening with Pete than me, I guess that is your choice darling.”

“I choose you…always. So anything I need to know for this night on the town you have planned?”

“Absolutely nothing, just look stunning and I’ll take care of the rest.”

“I’ll see what I can do about that…”

“Marvelous, though I must say, you could wear your pajamas and still accomplish it, so it’s really a low bar ;-) They’re coming back in, I’ll let you know when I might be free again.”

“Good luck.”

 

You read, you pace, you mindlessly watch TV with Pete, you check your phone constantly, but it’s hours before your checking finally pays off. 

“Finally I am free. Artie is driving me back to the B&B, and then I have a few errands to run. Can you be ready in 45 minutes?”

You desperately want to ask her how the rest of the day went, but hold off, choosing instead to focus on the night ahead of you. “I think I can manage that. What kind of errands?”

“Nothing for you to concern yourself with Agent Bering. Now go get yourself stunning.”

“I thought you said I had a rather low bar for that? Here I figured my jeans and way too big t-shirt would suffice.”

“Again insufferable. Don’t make me second guess taking you out.”

“You wouldn’t dare. You love me too much.”

“That I do. See you in a bit love.”

A thrill of excitement skitters up your spine at the prospect of an entire night completely planned for you by Helena. You have no idea what she could possibly have planned, but you can’t wait to find out, now you just have to figure out what to wear. Your date clothing options aren’t really all that vast, it’s not like you’ve really gone on any dates since you’ve lived here, lack of time and lack of options, plus the fact that since Helena came into your lives you have had zero desire to even look at anyone else, let alone actually date them. You helplessly slide through the clothes in your closet, making a mental note that you really need to get Helena’s things out of her car, no point in having an empty half of a closet if you don’t get her clothes out to actually hang up. Finally, your eyes fall upon something you’d forgotten you even had, and it just might be damn near perfect. You can’t believe that you actually still have a couple of dresses in your possession, but there it is, the right shade of dark green to bring out your eyes, it comes down just above your knees, long enough to be fairly modest, and short enough to hopefully drive Helena crazy, and it certainly clings to the right places to do the exact same thing. You lay it out on the bed, pull out a short pair of black heels, the last thing you need is to absolutely tower over her, and then go to deal with your hair, which is feeling wilder than usual, and make-up. It’s been so long since you’ve actually dressed up, you’re actually a little surprised at just how good you look once you’re done, you just hope Helena thinks the same thing.

It’s a little before 8 when Pete calls up to you that someone’s here for you. That’s kind of odd you think, who on earth would be here for you, unless, good Lord she was playing up this conventional date thing for all it was worth. You grab a small black sweater on the off chance it might get cold tonight, take one more passing look in the mirror, fixing a piece of your hair in the process, and head downstairs. All the preparation is well worth the look on Helena’s face when you come down the stairs. You think you can actually see her lose her breath a bit, and her eyes noticeably dilate, yet she’s not the only one caught off guard, because she’s standing there with a small bouquet of lilies, which she somehow remembered were your favorite flower, not to mention the fact that she looks devastatingly gorgeous. She has her hair up, almost identical to how it was the first time you met her, and she’s practically encased in black, tight black pants, a black vest, and jacket, and a white dress shirt, that really has no right to call itself buttoned; the entire combination is enough to make your knees practically buckle beneath you. Part of you processes a sense of surprise and thankfulness that Pete has bowed out of the foyer, leaving you to yourselves. 

You walk up to her, adjusting to the fact that she’s practically your height now with her heels on so that you barely have to lean down to give her a small kiss, “I thought we were unconventional? This seems quite conventional babe.”

“I figured it’d be a nice change of pace,” she winks at you. 

You take the flowers with a quiet thank you and another light kiss, and then retreat to the kitchen where Leena graciously takes them off your hands and promises to put them in water up in your room.

“So where are you taking me?” you ask as you walk down the porch to her car.

“I have to maintain some of my secrets for the evening darling,” and as she opens your door for you, another wisp of conventionality that has you simultaneously rolling your eyes and trembling, she whispers against your ear, “You look incredible by the way.”

“Thank you. You don’t look so bad yourself,” and this time it’s your turn to wink and revel in the slight blush that you see creep into her cheeks.

You’re almost shocked by the amazing level of normal you two are actually experiencing. She holds your hand as she drives, and you mock her choice of music on the radio. It’s been so long since you two have had any semblance of normalcy that you can’t help but feel awash in relaxed happiness. She tells you that by the end of the day, the Regents seemed open to the idea of her coming back to the Warehouse, on a probationary basis at first, with the goal of working up to the point where she would most likely serve as Steve’s new partner, once Claudia fully took over as caretaker. 

“What about us? The whole no fraternizing thing?”

“Honestly, they seem a bit willing to look past it. As I told you earlier, they think you are a good influence on me,” she gives your hand a small squeeze at that, showing her agreement with their assessment. “Though I do believe they’ll want to talk to you tomorrow. I think they would have preferred this evening, but I told them in unequivocal terms that you were occupied tonight.”

“I’m sure they loved that.”

“I took their willingness to comply as a good sign.”

“That’s a good point.”

“Now darling, we are here, therefore no more work talk. Let us for once act like we are normal people with normal lives.”

“I’m not sure that’s entirely possible, but I’m willing to give it a try.”

You arrive at a small, quiet bistro two towns over that is all twinkle lights and dark corners. You share an incredible bottle of wine and split dessert. You love that you no longer have to worry about toying with her fingers across the table or any other small display of affection that shows the entire world that this woman sitting across from you is the only thing that matters to you. As you’re nearing the end of your meal, when all that remains are your final glasses of wine, she lifts her glass up to yours and says, “I realize you’re generally supposed to do this at the beginning of a meal, but what the hell, we can’t allow ourselves to be that normal. So, let me say, my dear Myka, here’s to the first of many, many nights together, to feeling like the luckiest person in the world that I have you in my life to love, to a new beginning.”

You smile, gently tap your glass to hers, “To us, and to our future, I love you.”

She takes a small sip of her wine, “I love you too.”

You half expect her to head back to the B&B when you leave dinner, yet she continues to surprise. The night air is blissfully warm, a small gift of Indian summer in the middle of fall, and she drives you to the small park that is on the edge of Univille. She pulls a blanket out from somewhere amidst the chaos of her backseat, and you walk fingers entwined to the edge of a small pond that is quietly lapping against its shores. She lays the blanket down, kicks off her shoes, and leans back on her elbows. You join her, happy to discard your heels, and you lay as close to her as you can possibly manage. 

You watch the stars in companionable silence, listening to the sounds of the water, feeling the breeze play across your skin, and you realize you never imagined you could be so happy. It’s so peaceful that her voice actually makes you jump slightly, as it breaks across the quiet.

“I’ve always enjoyed watching the stars. It was a rare luxury in London during my time, but every now and then I would steal away to the country and relish the quiet, the calm of watching the world turn. For the longest time, the stars always made me feel quite small, even in my best moments they could render me feeling quite insignificant. How can you not when faced with the vast wonder of the world? After Christina died, I felt like I might be stuck in that feeling of smallness, overwhelmed by the weight of the world, even after the bronze, when I thought I could actually take control of things, there was always that lingering weight of insignificance…”

She leaves off the sentence, like she’s not quite sure how to continue. You slide into the space to fill in the next word for her, “Until?”

She pauses for the briefest of seconds, and then laces her fingers through yours, “Until you Myka. Even if you didn’t realize it at the time, you being in my life, made me realize that I could have a purpose again, that life could have meaning again, that there could actually be the possibility for joy. You single-handedly made me feel significant. I’m not sure I can ever properly thank you for that.”

You turn your head to look at her, and are met with an unwavering stare filled with warmth, passion, and hope, “Just promise to never stop loving me…that’s all the thanks I need.”

“That I can do,” and the kiss she gives you says more than words ever could.

When she breaks away, she resettles herself on her side, and you join her. You trace a light touch across her cheek, “You don’t realize you saved me too do you?” and you can see the look of questioning in her eyes. “I had shut myself off from the world. It wasn’t just Sam dying, but the person that I felt I had become because of Sam. It made me feel like nothing was worth the risk anymore, like somehow love had caused me to lose sight of what really mattered or something, and so I just kind of gave up. I built up these walls around myself, of control, of focus, of never wanting to make another mistake. I let myself drown in work, keeping myself from actually feeling anything most of the time, and sure moving here, and discovering this family changed a lot of that, but you, God, Helena, you are the first person who actually made me remember what love feels like. I didn’t think I’d ever find someone that would make me want to take those walls down, and then there you were, all brazen and challenging, and you…you changed everything. I had told myself I never wanted to feel love again, until I was faced with you and realized that that was absolutely hopeless.”

“I think some part of me loved you from the very beginning…that day at my house.”

You can’t help the laugh that escapes your lungs, “I pointed a gun at you, and you trapped me on the ceiling!”

“Well, love has an odd way of showing itself sometimes darling.”

“Like giving someone you barely know a grappler that you created yourself, of which there was only one, even after they called it old fashioned?”

“Precisely.”

“That’s when I knew ya know?”

“Knew what?”

“That you had a thing for me.”

“A thing for you?” She wraps her tongue around the colloquialism in a decidedly unsure way.

“Yes, a thing for me. You don’t do that for someone you’re just kind of ambivalent about.”

“I have no problem admitting that I was unabashedly flirting with you, yes.”

“One would say the fact that I kept the post-it note indicates I was pretty happy with the flirting.”

She looks genuinely surprised, “You kept that?”

You feel a slight blush creep up your neck, “I did. It’s currently serving as the bookmark in the book on my nightstand, you can check when we get home.”

“But why?”

“To remind myself that people can surprise you, and that what I was feeling for you was real.”

“So you had a thing for me too huh?”

“Indeed. The grappler kind of solidified it. It helped me get over the ceiling issue. Plus, if I do recall I did my own share of flirting that mission.”

“Ah yes, ‘Agent Wells, who is also an agent under me.’ I remember. I think you thought you were being rather subtle darling.”

“Wasn’t I?”

“Not quite. If you remember I had quite a difficult time regaining my composure to agree with that statement in an adequate amount of time. That’s when I knew I had apparently met my match with you.”

“Knew you were in trouble, huh?”

“Desperately so,” and she laughs and she kisses you, and it feels like it’s a kiss that could go on forever, but you allow yourself to lean away from her lips slightly to edge against her ear, “Helena, take me home…” words that are tinged with longing and promise all in one.

“Gladly darling.”


	7. And when it begins it's magnificent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, one would say I've made these two wait long enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of sexy, fluff ahead in this chapter. If that's not your thing feel free to skip and pick up in the next chapter :-)

Given how complicated everything else has been between you, you never expected that this side of things would be so unbelievably simple. In the back of your mind you had been expecting hesitancies, nerves, and questions, but instead it was all smooth lines, pieces fitting perfectly together, and an overwhelming sense of peace. You had no idea it could be so easy; that all it would take was sliding your arms around her waist as she kicked her shoes off into the back corner of the closet, lingering kisses into the back of her neck, as she whispers, “Now I have officially started to unpack.”

“Good, I was starting to worry you were simply going to live out of your car for the rest of your life,” you laugh against her skin, continuing to trace light kisses up behind her ear, as she leans back into you, and links her fingers with the ones you have resting against her stomach.

“Well that would be a terrible waste of all your hard work making space for me. I wouldn’t want to seem ungrateful,” the last word barely coming out on her breath, as you’ve caught her up short by lightly running the tip of your tongue up her neck and blowing ever so slightly on her primed skin, causing goosebumps to spring across her body instantly. 

“What was that last word, I couldn’t quite hear it,” you whisper into her ear before lightly taking her earlobe between your teeth, giving it a slight tug.

Before you make another move, she spins around in your arms, hands combing into your hair, as she leans up on the tips of her toes, now considerably shorter than you as she has shed her shoes and you have yet to divest of your own, and kisses you with abandon, begging your lips for entrance that you gladly grant. Heat rushes through your entire body as her tongue glides easily over your lips. You try desperately to stifle the moan that is gathering at the back of your throat, but when her teeth tug urgently at your bottom lip, you can’t help yourself.

She pulls away, barely, “Myka,” her voice lower, awash in desire, “as much as I love how amazing they make your legs look, please for the love of all that is holy take those shoes off, or you might murder my toes.”

You laugh and release your hold around her waist, moving one hand to her shoulder to keep you balanced as you remove one heel than the other, tossing them behind her into the closet. 

“Excuse me, but I do believe that your shoes just invaded my side of the closet,” she looks at you in mock exasperation.

You slip your arms around her waist again, pulling her into you, leaning down to place a light kiss against her collarbone, whispering as you move to the other one, “Do you really want me to stop what I’m doing and go move them,” the other kiss landing a little harder against her skin. 

You hear her sharp intake of breath as her hands slide up your arms, tracing obscure patterns up and down your skin, “I suppose it can wait until the morning.”

“Good, as I’m rather busy at the moment,” you continue to press deeper and deeper kisses against the line of her pulse, sliding your hands up to remove the clip that is holding her hair up. You feel her chuckle into your ear as she gives a small shake of her head to fully release her hair from being tangled up all evening. You rake your nails through it, reveling in the feel of it between your fingers. 

Her fingers mirror yours, tangled in your curls, urging your head up from her neck to pull you into a searing kiss. For longer than you can process, all you are is a knotted mess of hands, tongues, and lips. Before you know what has hit you a realization dawns in the back of your mind that this is yours for the rest of your life, this woman, this incredible, maddening, amazing woman is yours to kiss until the end of time itself, and that fact is the only thing that could ever make you pause from your attention to her lips. You pull away ever so slightly, heart fluttering at hearing the small whimper that passes across her lips at your absence, but you have to, because you have to tell her, right here and now, because the words are begging to come out, because even though you’ve said it a thousand times before, you’ve never felt them quite like this until this moment, “I love you Helena.”

Those eyes, they pierce you with such an intensity you couldn’t look away even if you wanted to. They’re at once filled with passion and warmth, determination and softness. “My Myka…I love you,” and with that the world fades. The slow burn that’s been building between you since that hotel room in Wisconsin, really since that very first day in London, is boiling underneath both of your skins, and you know as much as you both want this night to linger, you doubt that will be possible, because it’s too much, being able to touch her the way you’ve always wanted to, to know that there’s no longer a reason to hold back, how on earth can you go slow when that’s the case? When for so long all you’ve wanted is her, and now she’s yours, and you are so completely hers, how can you go slow? The last vestige of hope that you have of trying to pace yourself disappears as you feel her hands leave your hair and snake around your back to ever-so-slowly drag the zipper of your dress down. You can feel her smirking against your lips, and you know that that very smirk will be the death of you. You will never understand how one person can be so coy, seductive, and calm at the same time. She peels the slight straps off of your shoulders and eases the fabric off of your body to pool on the floor at your feet. You step out of it, catching it with one of your toes and flinging it under her desk. “I must say darling, as gorgeous as you looked in that dress, I much prefer you out of it.”

Your knees actually buckle. You thought that was just a saying people used when they’re flirted with, but that tone of voice, all thick and lousy with desire, you can’t help it. She actually laughs slightly, as she grasps your elbows to keep you steady, “Shall I get you off your feet darling?”

At this point it’s taking all of your will power to not beg her to throw you on the bed, but you’re somehow able to resist, “Not quite yet.” You roll the last word into her mouth with another kiss, and start on her buttons. She had taken her jacket off once you had gotten into your room, but between the vest and her shirt, it’s more buttons than you would care to deal with at the moment. You tug the vest from her shoulders and fling it into the corner, then lightly rake your nails down the skin of her chest, visible through the open, top buttons of her shirt. She hums in pleasure at the feeling, and you slowly, tantalizingly start undoing her shirt, letting your fingers linger along each new stretch of skin that is revealed. Finally, there are no more buttons, and you run your fingers up her sides to tuck your hands under the top of her shirt and slide it off her shoulders. 

Every move you make has started to come by instinct. Never in your life has it ever been this easy, trusting where to touch her, wanting to memorize every single inch of her skin, playing a delicate game of connect the dots with your tongue over the freckles you never anticipated her having. Slowly, carefully, she starts easing you backwards, until the back of your knees give way slightly at the edge of the mattress, and before you know what’s happened she has scooped you up in her arms, your knees dangling over her forearms, arms wrapped around her neck, and she’s kissing you like she never wants to stop. You can feel her moving herself onto the bed, with you still fully engulfed in her embrace, and as she lays you back you wonder if you might actually die from the anticipation of her finally touching you in the ways you’ve been imagining for far too many years. 

The look in her eyes is enough to set every single nerve in your body aflame with want, “You know one of these days those looks you give me are going to kill me. I know it.”

She smirks then, and you think that dying right here and now in her arms might not be the worst way to go, “You’ve been dealing with these looks for three years now…sometimes in the line of fire. I believe you can bear it; you’ll have to, since I have no intention of ever stopping looking at you like this.”

“Good,” and you ease her knees around your waist, melting into the feel of her body against yours. 

She was moving slowly before, almost painful in her intention, but now, with you lying underneath her all sense of restraint seems to have fled. Suddenly, your arms are flung over your head, grasped together at the wrist by one of her hands, while she wraps her other arm tightly around your waist, pulling you as close to her as possible, as she buries her lips at just the right juncture between your throat and your collarbone. Your body is straining with every ounce of energy in you to push back against her grip on your wrists, but she won’t relinquish them, pressing further into you, as though she’s trying to convey with only her body that you are hers for the days, years, centuries to come. You can feel the goosebumps crawling over your skin, as she moves lower and lower onto your body, still somehow maintaining the grip on your wrists, as she kisses every inch of you available to her. Her teeth graze against your side, where your ribs join into your muscles, and you twitch and gasp at the shiver it sends through you. You can feel her small chuckle of pleasure against your skin, and it only increases how much you want her. Finally, her grip lapses for the merest of moments, and it’s all the gap you need to fling your hands down into her hair, pulling her back up to your lips, because even if it’s been seconds, it’s far too long since you’ve kissed her. You grip the back of her neck, and the ecstasy that passes through you when you feel her moan from the back of her throat against your tongue, is something you’re certain you’ve never experienced before. No longer constrained to keeping your wrists positioned, her hands are roaming freely across your skin. At some point, you vaguely remember both of your bras being practically torn off and thrown to the other side of the room, but you’re so lost in a haze of her tongue and her teeth against your skin that you don’t really have any sense of reality. She nips and she soothes, she teases and she lavishes, but it isn’t until her fingernails scrape against the joint of your hips that your breath actually hitches and your movements are no longer your own as you feel your hips twitch against her touch. It is that small movement that slows her down, and you think you’re going to pass out, because every ounce of you is attuned to what she’s doing, and what she’s doing is removing your last vestige of clothing with a slowness that is painstaking. She’s trailing light kisses against your calves and barely pressing her lips against your inner thigh, and you at once have chills and feel like you’re on fire. You have one vague moment where you’re able to actually open your eyes, as she ever so slightly lifts up your right leg to cross over her shoulder, and in that moment you make eye contact, and the smile she gives you is at once wicked and full of love, her eyes smoldering with dark, intense heat, and you watch her give one last kiss to your hip joint, before your eyes slam shut at the pure, unadulterated bliss that is her kissing and touching you in ways you had only imagined possible. 

You’re no longer able to control the steady flow of moans and whispers of her name that are falling from your lips. One of your hands desperately gropes for hers where it’s wrapped around your upper thigh, while your other hand does all it can to keep you grounded with a grip on the headboard. She links her fingers with yours, and jerks slightly when you grip tighter as you can feel your muscles starting to contract around a particularly mind-blowing move of her tongue, but she never lets go, gripping your fingers just as tightly as you have hers. Just when you think you couldn’t possibly feel any deeper level of want, there are her fingers, and it takes all of ten seconds for you to sink your fingernails into the back of the headboard, as your back arches off the bed. She tightens her hold on your hand, refusing to let you go, refusing to stop what she’s doing to you, until you’ve been completely and utterly spent, feeling wave after wave of bliss wash through your body. When you finally are able to relax back onto the mattress, she slowly begins to move, ghosting a few more light kisses against your thighs before she crawls back up your body, never once breaking away from the hand you have held tight. She lays lightly across you, and as you remove your fingers from the bed to waft through her hair, she brings your entwined fingers up to her lips and swipes a kiss across your inner wrist, causing an involuntary shudder to run back through your body. She quirks an eyebrow at you, and remarks, “Another place I’ll have to remember drives you crazy, darling.”

You have no ability to speak. You feel like you’ve been melted down into your core elements, existing as only a maze of nerves and muscles that know nothing but her touch and her voice. There is love, desire, want, lust, need, roiling through your body, and they have left you completely stalled to do anything but look at her, raking your nails through her hair, relishing the way that her eyes close just slightly against your touch. It comes out as barely a whisper, but it’s all you can manage at the moment, “Is it strange that there’s part of me that still can’t believe you’re here?”

The back of her free hand caresses your cheek and you think you’ve never experienced someone so clearly saying they love you with their eyes alone, but that’s just what she’s doing. “No my darling. I can’t quite believe it myself. There’s part of me that fears, quite irrationally, that this is a dream. It seems impossible that after all these years, I finally have you.”

You lean into her touch, placing a small kiss against her palm, “Always. Now that you’re here, I’m never letting you go. I hope you know that.” Your lips quirk up in a smile small, teasing her despite the seriousness of what you’re actually saying to her.

“I do,” but there’s something lingering behind her eyes, “though I must say I still find it unbelievable that someone like you could possibly love me this much.”

“Helena, how many times do I have to tell you to stop that?” You lean up slightly to capture her lips, willing her to feel just how much you do love her, wishing that there was some way you could make her know with just one kiss. “I love you, more than I could ever hope to explain to you. I love you for all of the millions of ways that you are maddening, amazing, stubborn, wonderful,” you place another quick kiss against her lips, “I love you,” another, “I love you,” another, though slightly deeper, “I love you,” another and now you release her hand from yours, and guide them slowly down her back, “I love you,” another, tracing non-descript patterns over her skin, “I love you,” and you see one small, barely noticeable tear escape down her cheek, you feel it fall against your lips as you kiss her once again, this time rolling her hips away from you, giving yourself the leverage to move her underneath you. You prop yourself up on your elbows next to her head, running your fingers through her hair, “Look at me,” her eyes open slowly, almost hesitantly, “I love you, I could go on and on about all the reasons why and how, but I won’t because I have other things I would like to do at the moment,” and you’re glad that gets her to smile, “but I do, I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Then there are no more words, there is only you and her, and all the ways in which you seek to ease the pain and the worry and the doubts out of her with your hands and your lips. You could spend hours touching her, feeling her muscles, strong and tight, rippling underneath your tongue, relishing in finding the ways to make her lose control, actually making her honest-to-God giggle as you guide your fingertips over a particularly sensitive area along her right side, biting maybe a little too hard against her hip bone, but hearing the way she doesn’t seem to mind at all as you mark little corners of her body as your own. With quicker fingers than you thought you were capable of, you flick open the thin belt hugging around her hips, then deftly undo yet another button—so many buttons—and quiver slightly at the moan that leaves her lips as you drag the zipper of her pants down. With a quick rise of her hips and a twist of your fingers into her belt loops, you fling her pants into the corner with the rest of your clothing. There’s a small flicker in the back of your mind, as you let your tongue glide along the lowest part of her stomach where sheer fabric meets tantalizingly smooth skin, that you should be nervous, yet you aren’t, it isn’t even a plausible thought, and you realize it’s because you’re so insanely in love with this woman that there’s absolutely no reason to be nervous, after all this is what you have wanted for more years that you even want to think about. Having her just like this, is what you’ve dreamed about since the very first time you saw that glint in her eye even while you had a gun to her head, and even more so after she took the opportunity to flirt with you even as you were locking her in handcuffs. No matter how long it’s taken you to get here, this moment was always, always inevitable. You peel away her last piece of clothing, and when you hear her breath catch merely at how close you are to her, close enough that she can feel you breathing, you can’t contain the smirk that tugs at the corner of your lips. There’s something deeply intoxicating about being able to render a woman who has molded, shaped, and beaten words into submission for years, completely speechless. She doesn’t remain speechless for long however, because once your tongue is on her, there are more words coming out of her mouth than you quite know how to process, though admittedly most of them seem to be incoherent jumbles of your name, “oh God’s,” and murmurs of assent at your ministrations. She keeps one hand laid possessively against your head, fingers tangled in your curls, willing you closer, deeper, in whichever ways she needs you; her other hand is clamped, white-knuckled around the pillow under her head. Just as her own did to you, it is your fingers that bring a strangled cry from her throat, and her hands relinquish their hold on your hair, groping desperately for your hand that’s on her hip, holding on to you like you’re a tether keeping her from floating off the bed. You wait to move a single inch until you feel her grip on your hand relax, and then lay up against her side, tracing small patterns over her stomach muscles, as you watch her eyes slowly flutter open. 

She tucks a wayward curl behind your ear, and gently cups your cheek in her palm, looking at you in a way that conveys more than words could ever say. You curl up against her side, laying against the crook of her shoulder, feeling the safety and contentment of her arm tightening around your waist. She places a gentle yet firm kiss against your forehead, and stills your fingers on her stomach, by once again entwining your fingers, gently sliding her thumb against the back of your hand, with a rhythm that could be enough to lull you to sleep if you let it, yet you fight to fend off exhaustion, for a few minutes more, wanting to savor every ounce left of this night that has been so peaceful and so perfect. It’s only when you hear the change in her breathing that you realize she has lost the battle with sleep, and you remember that she has had far too long of a day, and that she is most likely still exhausted from her drive yesterday. You gently sit up, placing a light kiss to her cheek, that makes her stir, and she mumbles almost inaudibly, “Sorry darling, I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you.”

“It’s quite alright babe. You’ve had a long day.”

“And night I might add,” and the smirk she gives you makes you melt a little bit more.

You go to move off the bed and she practically whines in protest, pulling you back towards her, “I’m just going to throw on some pajamas. Do you want any?”

“I suppose, seeing as there are other people in this house, it might be advisable.”

“Ok,” you place a small peck against her cheek, and bound out of bed, pulling clothes out of your dresser and throwing on a light pair of shorts and a tank top. You pull out the same for her and toss them against her bare skin on the bed, causing her to give an overly exaggerated “oomph.” She slides into the clothes without ever leaving the bed and practically flings herself underneath the covers, nestling deep into the mattress. She takes a deep breath, “Mmm, this shirt smells like you. Thank you.”

You smile and curl up next to her, “You’re welcome. I swear we will get your things out of the car in the morning.”

“Whenever, right now I have no complaints about wearing your clothes. They feel like home.”

“Well, you are home.”

“I most certainly am.”

You curl your arm underneath your head, closing your eyes, no longer quite able to fight off the sleep that is trying to overtake you. You feel her fingers against your cheek, “Myka?”

You open your eyes, looking into hers, feeling them boring straight into your soul, “Yeah?”

“I love you, so much.”

You can’t contain the peaceful smile that immediately steals over your face, and you lean in to kiss her, soft and slow, “I love you too babe.”

She smiles and then lets you turn around in her arms, she curls around you, arm tight but gentle around your waist. Immediately her fingers steal into yours, like she wants to be absolutely sure of your presence. She presses a final kiss against the back of your neck, and whispers a soft good night. Almost immediately you can feel her already breathing deeply against you, completely and contentedly asleep. You smile, deeper than you ever knew you could, take a deep breath and nestle against her, happier than you ever have been now that you finally have her home.


	8. God Bless the Inventor of Post-It Notes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quicker than usual update, but I really wanted to get this chapter up, because I feel slightly sentimental about it. This is the last "full-length" chapter, because the last is more of a short epilogue to round things out. Enjoy!

Two years later…

Your alarm jars you into the reality of a morning far brighter than it should be for how early you usually wake up. Immediately you realize that you’re alone, Helena’s side of the bed empty and cold, though you have zero recollection of her getting out of bed. You fling your arm at your cell phone, begging the alarm to just stop ringing, but your fingers meet resistance. There’s a piece of paper stuck to your screen. You hastily take it off, swipe across your alarm, and feel a jolt of panic as you realize that it is officially way past the time you are supposed to be at the Warehouse. Before you can bolt out of bed, you remember the piece of paper in your fingers. There’s a circled number one in the corner, followed by a delicate scrawl of Helena’s handwriting.

“Darling, do not panic. You aren’t late. I confess, I have secured you the day off.”

Your brows knot together in confusion. What the hell was going on? Why on earth would she get you the day off on a random Wednesday in April? And why on earth would Artie agree to that? Sure, he had warmed to her and to you two being together, but this seemed way too out of the norm for him. Your eyes travel around the room, and you realize that there are post-it notes scattered all over the place What. The. Hell? Helena has always had a thing for post-its, something you’ve known since that day at Tamalpais. It always amused you that a woman as brilliant as her, who had concocted time machines and grappling hooks, could be so deeply fascinated by something as simple as post-it notes. Yet, she was and now they were dotted around your room like stars for some apparent reason. Clearly, Helena is up to something, and you realize that must be what the number one was for on the note on your phone. All of them are numbered. You look up at the lamp on your bedside table, where another post-it greets you, dangling off the edge of the lampshade, a bold number two printed in the corner. 

“I know you’re confused…I can imagine the look on your face. Trust me. Go get a shower.”

Ok, well apparently, your day is planned for you, and you feel a surge of anticipation at just what Helena could have possibly concocted. You ignore the other slips that are attached to your dresser, her desk, the door, figuring that if she has instructed you to shower your next message will probably be there. Sure enough, right there on the bathroom mirror.

“Remember my first morning back? My toothbrush made you sentimental and I nearly got weepy at a hair dryer.”

You laugh at the memory. She was right, you almost lost your mind at her toothbrush next to yours. You look down to where it rests, in the same position as it was that morning, where it has been every morning since then, and there’s number four.

“Still in the same place, and every morning when I see our things mixed and mingled together, I smile, reveling in the ways that our lives have intertwined.”

You feel almost foolish at the tears that spring to your eyes. What is she trying to do to you? You start the shower, and laugh because she has indeed left a note for you in there too, in just the right spot that it wouldn’t get soaking wet before you saw it.

“Oh the memories we have had in here. Think on that darling….”

Still after all this time, you blush, thinking back to the many, many mornings where you have been nearly late for work because one of you has climbed in with the other, which has proved utterly distracting and utterly satisfying.  
You shower, mind swirling around this little treasure hunt Helena has put together. You’re completely confused, but also completely smitten, because this woman never ceases to surprise you, and your stomach is swirling in excitement at what the other notes could possibly say and where they could possibly lead. You head back into your room, looking for the next number. It resides on the front of the top drawer of your dresser. 

“You cleared drawer space for me. Thank you for letting me into your life so completely, all the way down to a shared sock drawer.

You laugh because she is so insanely cute. It didn’t take long for your clothes to get jumbled together, and more often than not, late at night, she would steal a pair of your thick socks to cover her freezing feet, insisting she didn’t want her own, but much preferred yours, for some unknown reason. She’s clearly thought this out well, because you instinctively move to your closet to pull out clothes, just as she clearly knew you would.

“No special clothing requirements for the day darling. Though I must confess I wouldn’t mind a tight pair of jeans, your boots, and something that brings out your eyes.”

You can do that. If she’s gone to this much trouble for whatever it is that she’s planning, the least you can do is wear what she has requested. You pull out a pair of your blue jeans, a dark green long-sleeved shirt, and your dark brown boots. She loves you in your boots, a feeling that is one hundred percent mutual, and your mind jumps to wondering what on earth she’s wearing, if she thought your clothes out so thoroughly. Once you’re dressed you realize that there are still two notes left, one on her desk and one on the door. You figure desk first. This note is decidedly longer, her handwriting having to get smaller to accommodate the limited space.

“There are still days that I wish I could find the words to truly thank you for bringing this here, into our room. It means more than I can say to you that you did that for me, and that you seem to revel so deeply in my continued desire to write. It is one of the reasons I love you so much Myka, you accept me, every single part of me. However, you have proven to be the one thing that has eluded words in my life. Truly, I have no words to tell you how desperately in love with you I am, but I shall continue to try to find the right words, you are well worth the search for them.”

Now, you actually are crying, until you see the note on the door, which chases away the tears and leaves you laughing.

“Wipe away the tears…I made sure there would be fresh coffee for you when you awoke. Go grab a cup and enjoy it in the library.”

She knows you way too well. You wonder how she made sure there would be coffee. The others have to be involved in this, somehow. You go down to the kitchen and indeed there is a fresh pot of coffee waiting for you, with your favorite mug, one from Stratford Upon Avon that she bought you when she was there on an artifact snag with Claudia. She had amazingly found you one with your favorite Shakespeare quote on it. You were insanely jealous that Claudia got to join in on the Shakespeare mission, but you were in Italy with Pete and there was nothing to be done. She brought you the mug back, along with a box of tea, that she never ceased to try to get you to drink, despite your continued preference for coffee. The quote was a shared moment between you, as she knew it was the one you had tattooed on the inside of your ankle, something you had been able to keep from the others, miraculously. Only she knew that it was there, and why, just what this particularly quote meant to you, “Simply the thing that I am shall make me live.” She was the only person you had ever told about the night that drove you to engrave those words permanently on your skin, about the night in college that found you so close to the brink of oblivion that you almost let yourself go, how close you had come to ceasing to exist. She had cried when you told her, you had cried telling her, finally freeing another secret from your heart. You’d never imagined you would find someone you would actually want to tell that story to, but you loved her, and she had asked, and you wanted her to know. You also wanted her to know that loving her was one of the things in this life that made you so happy you hadn’t done what you came so close to doing; that there was a part of your heart that wondered if somehow you knew your future, that if you just let it unfold, would lead you to her. You pour yourself a cup of coffee, and peel the post-it from the front of the mug.

“I love you. Every day I thank my lucky stars that I have you in my life, and every time I see this quote, either on this mug or as I kiss against it on your skin, I am thankful that you are here, that you are who you are, that I am lucky enough to have fallen in love with a woman who is as miraculously wonderful as you Myka Bering. The thing that you are is simply the thing that I love.”

You stare at the words, not knowing how long you’ve been standing there, until you remember she had told you to go to the library. You have to give your head a slight shake, to bring it out of the blissful fog her words have caused, and finally, after carefully placing the note into your pocket, you turn your steps towards the library. It’s your favorite place in the house; other than your room, it’s where you spend the most time together, usually curled up on the same chair, reading, sleeping, just being together. The others don’t usually bother with the library, so it has become an extension of your own private space. You walk in and there’s a note attached to the chair.

“Enjoy your coffee love. There is no rush. Though I must give you a recommendation on your reading material, possibly relax with your favorite book of mine. I realize that it’s not your copy, as that rarely leaves our room, but it will still suffice.”

Your feet take you immediately to the shelf you need, the shelf that has always been solely dedicated to her work. It still astounds you, how this strange, mystifying world of endless wonder has changed so much of your perspective and brought so much into your life. The words that molded and shaped your childhood, read in tiny, dark corners of your bedroom, imagined worlds that this man had come up with, words that had traveled with you well into adulthood, now held such a different meaning. Everything changed when she appeared, and you realized they were her words, and each time you read and reread these books you love so much, they changed and altered as you learned more about her. Then you throw in the fact that she is somehow over a hundred years old and in love with you, and it all just makes your head blissfully cloudy. If you could have told that little girl, all those years ago, huddled in those dark corners, that she would grow up and not only meet the woman who wrote those words, but would fall in love with her…it might just have made the interminable years of high school and teenage angst and worry a little more tolerable. Your fingers pull out the thin, hard bound copy of The Time Machine, and notice the small, yellow flag sticking out fairly early in the text. You take it back to the chair, and nestle down into its depths, sipping your coffee, and reveling in the familiarity of the pages between your fingers. The note, your twelfth thus far this morning, is plastered to the beginning of chapter two, and you actually laugh right out loud because she is way too clever for her own good, and has far too good of a memory. You had told her once, when she asked what you got out of reading her words over and over again, that each time you catch a new glimpse of her thoughts, her mind in them, and that it made you feel closer to her, particularly when she was gone. You also let slip that you found some of her writing a bit autobiographical, particularly this part of the The Time Machine that she has flagged for you, where the Time Traveller is described. You told her that when you read that again, after meeting her for the first time, you realized that it was, in fact, clearly written as a description of her. “The Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness.” She had feigned annoyance because clearly she was not a man, yet she had also told you that she loved how well you knew her, which was much the message of this particular post-it.

“You see me. You see me for all the things that I am, good, bad, and otherwise, and you see me for all the things that I can’t even see myself. Never in any lifetime did I expect to find such love and acceptance, and I will admit that it has taken me a long time to fully embrace that acceptance. Thank you for your patience, thank you for your love. Also, thank you for loving my words—it does my writer’s heart a world of good to see that even through the decades they could change someone’s life, though you must know that your words, your heart, have changed mine as well.”

There’s a part of you that is beginning to feel slightly nervous. There can be no denying that you are deeply enjoying this little scavenger hunt, but the depth of the emotion present in some of the messages is starting to make you wonder just what lies at the end of their path. Some of them sound like promises made before a goodbye, while others seem like simple reflections on the life you’ve built together. You choose to trust whatever she has planned, and enjoy the ride for what it is. You read a few chapters and finish your coffee, only to realize you have no idea what your next step is, there has to be another note in here, something to guide you. You go back to the shelf to return the book, and to peek through the rest to see if that is where your next step lies. You are quickly rewarded, as you see another piece of yellow poking out of The Island of Dr. Moreau. This one is tucked into the back, and you already know what passage it’s marking, it’s one you have talked about over and over again, “ There is—though I do not know there is or why there is—a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I could not live." 

“I know that we have talked more about this passage than probably any other, but as I have said before it is one of my very favorites, even more so with you in my life Myka. For it is you that gave, give, me hope. For so long, I was wandering in the darkness, and you brought me light. For so long, I felt I had nothing worthwhile to live for. You, my darling, give me hope, and thus you give me a reason, every, single day to live. (Now go get your keys)”

Well, there’s a non-sequitur, if ever there was one, but you suppose there’s really no logical way to direct one out of the door. You’ve told Helena on numerous occasions that this text makes you feel the exact same way about her. In truth, you told her, Island, was never one of your favorites, yet it was the one that had changed the most for you, once she came into your life. In so many ways, she too, gave you hope. You didn’t realize how truly lost, or at least guarded and walled-off, you had become until she had started to tear down those walls brick by brick. You make a mental note to tell her, again, how much you echo her thoughts when it comes to this, she has to know that she is not alone in the feeling that you give each other something to live for. You go and put your mug back down in the kitchen, and then grab your keys from the wall by the front door. This time the note is quick.

“Drive safe. There are directions in your car.”

Once again, you are bowled over by the amount of planning that has gone into whatever today is. The intricate laying out of the notes, the thought process behind getting you to follow them in such a pattern, the amazing ability to have done this all while you were sound asleep upstairs. This clearly wasn’t the work of a night, or a few days, but of intense preparation. Now, you just had to figure out where the hell she was taking you. You climb into the SUV, and indeed, as promised there is another note awaiting your attention.

“You don’t have to go that far really. Remember our first real night together when I came home? We went to dinner, and then we watched the stars. It remains one of my fondest memories of our time together. So, to the park you go, down by the lake. (Also, I apologize but I have toyed with your radio just slightly)”

Oh Lord, if Helena has been messing with the music you could be in trouble. She had developed a really odd taste in music, taking a few too many cues from Claudia, leaning heavily upon obscure rock and indie music. You start the car, and it’s set to the CD player. You pull out of the driveway, as the small, quiet tones of a guitar strumming hit your ears, and instantly there are tears, once again, in your eyes. God, she is making you cry a lot this morning, this better be worth it, because you feel like a sentimental mess. “The dawn is breaking…a light shinin’ through…you’re barely waking…and I’m tangled up in you…” It was a hopelessly sappy song, something you usually wouldn’t listen to, but last spring the coffee shop in Univille that you frequent so much had gone through a rather long period of playing it incessantly. So incessantly that you realized you knew all the words without even trying. Then one quiet afternoon of finding her there once again, nose in a book, feet ready on the chair opposite to welcome your presence into her solitude it had come on and she had given you this look. Then she quietly, almost shyly, said, “This song has come to remind me of you darling, of us.” It hadn’t taken much thought to realize that it did indeed seem to fit you two perfectly. You crashed, you collided, you fell down, but you made sense, you were meant for each other, in spite of all the complications, when it came down to it, it was always going to be the two of you together. You told her how much you agreed, but then proceeded to tease her that this was yet another concession to conventionality, that you two have a song. She told you quite adamantly she didn’t care whether it was conventional or not, and then with another smirk, she had turned back to her book, but not before she had reached across the table to link her fingers with yours.

It wasn’t far to the park, ten minutes max, barely giving you enough time to explore through the rest of the music Helena had prepared for you. From what you can tell it’s a heavy mix of songs that mean something to both of you, and songs that you have teased her mercilessly for liking. When you get to the park, you realize that her car is there. You pull into a spot next to hers, and realize, with a twinge of nervous anticipation, that you must be getting to the end of the messages. The path to the lake is on a slight downhill, lined with trees the whole way down. When you get out of the car, you see that there is a note on each and every tree, and at the end of the line of trees, you can just barely see her, reclining back on her elbows, book in her lap, facing the lake. She doesn’t turn around, so you simply proceed from tree to tree.

“Thank you for indulging in my little game darling. I assure you there is a point.”

“The point is to tell you in a new and different way how completely, madly in love with you I am Myka.”

“You have changed my life, in more ways than I can ever hope to explain.”

“You have given me light, hope, love, a life I never dreamed I would be able to have. A life that I am grateful for everyday when I wake up with you in my arms.”

“I live everyday hoping that I am making you as happy as you are making me, and I have every intention of never ceasing in those efforts. To give you the life you deserve Myka, all the love you deserve, to never let you go one day for the rest of our lives where you don’t know and feel how much you are loved and how happy you make me.”

You’re at the end of the tree line, practically standing right behind her. There’s no way, that she hasn’t heard you approaching. For some reason, your hands are shaking, the post-its rattling together in your fingers. 

“Helena?”

You see her visibly take a deep breath, and instinctually you do too, because clearly something is happening, you have no idea what, but there’s a niggling in the back of your mind as to what it might be, and it makes your heart pound. She looks at you over her shoulder, not yet moving, “Hello darling.” It’s then that you notice that there’s a basket next to her, and you wonder if this has just been a really, really elaborate plan to get you on a date, maybe going for a really unconventional way of doing something conventional. You think that for all of two seconds, because then she’s standing up, and turning around, and there’s a look in her eyes that makes your breath start coming in short clips. 

You try to joke, “You’ve left me quite a few notes this morning.”

She smiles, almost nervously, “I have, but there is still one more I need you to read,” and then it’s all happening in a blur, because you see her reach into her back pocket, and she’s kneeling down in front of you, and you’re already crying and you have absolutely no control over yourself. 

“Helena?” Your voice is shaking, and you’re trying to focus, knowing you need to remember this. The world at once feels like it is spinning too fast and moving in slow-motion. Your brain desperately seeks to click into place to concentrate on her words.

“One more note darling,” and then she’s opening a box that has no right to somehow hold a post-it note inside of it, yet you know her, and she has clearly figured out a way to make that happen, because it’s there, nestled into the lid, the bottom of it, just barely coming to rest against the white gold, diamond ring that inhabits the box.

“Will you marry me?”

Your breath catches in your throat, feeling the tears slowly streaking down your cheeks, and it takes every ounce of focus to actually listen to the words coming out of her mouth, “I suppose, I should read this one for you darling, as it is a rather important question, deserving of being spoken out loud.” There are tears in her eyes, and her voice is slightly shaking, but she somehow manages to get the words out, “Myka, will you marry me?”

You have no ability to think of words, let alone form them, because you have no idea how to process what is happening, other than feeling like you have never been this happy in your entire life. The best you can muster is a whispered yes, with an enthusiastic nod of your head, and then you’re pulling her up to you, throwing your arms around her neck, and kissing her like it’s the end of the world. After what could be minutes or hours, she unwillingly breaks away from you, bringing the box up into the sliver of space that is separating you, “May I please put this on your finger?”

“Absolutely,” and you’re both still crying as she slides the beautiful, delicate diamond onto your finger. “Helena, it’s beautiful.”

“It looks perfect on you darling.”

You kiss her again, deeply, passionately. You only pull away from her to ask one slightly teasing question, “You realize you just did the most conventional thing on earth, in the most unconventional way possible?”

“That was precisely the plan, because isn’t that what we are Myka? Two, completely unconventional people, who have somehow found each other, and somehow eked out a little conventional in the midst of a totally insane, complicated, unconventional world.”

“I love you babe.”

“I love you too darling.”

Eventually, somehow in between kisses and embraces, you settle down onto the blanket together, where you ask whether you should really be opening a bottle of wine this early in the day, even though it is nearly afternoon, and she proclaims this is a celebration and well worth the exception. She’s packed lunch, and you spend the day there, simply, peacefully, together. Every few minutes, you can’t stop yourself from looking down at the ring on your finger, amazed at how far you’ve come and how lucky you are to have her, how lucky you are to have each other, how insanely lucky you are that this woman is your forever, your future, your everything, and that she miraculously feels the same way about you. She sees you pondering your fingers, “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking how unbelievably lucky I am to have you, to love you, and how miraculous it is that you love me.”

“I do, Myka, more than you could ever imagine.”

You roll onto your side to face her, and she mirrors you moves exactly. You look at her with amazement and love, grabbing her hand to entwine your fingers, and only then whispering, “We’re getting married…”

Her smile is gentle, content, over-the-moon happy, “That we are darling, that we are,” and then she kisses you and nothing else in the world matters.


	9. Epilogue: Making Good on a Deal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short little chapter to wrap this up. Thank you all so much for reading! It has been wonderful sharing this story, and I appreciate all the kudos and comments.

It didn’t take long to decide that if you were going to get married, you definitely needed to live somewhere that didn’t come with multiple roommates. You had talked and wondered and questioned, but what you always came back to was the fact that you loved them all, but desperately needed your own place. You both suspected something distinctively Warehouse-y when within a few weeks of your engagement, the house just down the road from the B&B went up for sale. Everything was decided on rather quickly once that happened. You were ready to start the next chapter of your lives together, and that is what found you sitting in the middle of your room surrounded by boxes wasting a perfectly beautiful spring day on packing.

Helena has finished boxing up everything in her desk, lamenting that she will never get things back the way she wants them, yet you can already see the wheels turning for new plans of how to better organize her endless supply of notebooks and papers cataloguing all her ideas. She tapes up the top, stands and stretches, then starts to head towards the door.

“Hey!” You punctuate it by throwing a roll of packing tape at her. 

She turns and reclines against the door jam, “Yes, darling?”

“Where do you think you’re going? All we have left are the books, and then we’ll be done.”

“I am well aware, those however, are yours to tend to. We made a deal remember?”

Your brows furrow at the coy, way-too-proud grin on her face, until realization dawns in your mind, “No way are you actually holding me to that!” and you send another roll of tape her way.

She deftly catches it and starts twirling it around her fingers, “Oh I am indeed. If I do recall, you were in St. Louis, and I was lamenting how many books I had to pack. You informed me I was never allowed to stop buying them, despite how annoying they are to manage while moving. I told you that if that was the case you got the pleasure of packing them the next time they had to be boxed up. As I said, we made a deal.”

“You are a cruel woman Helena Wells.”

“Cruel I may be, but free from packing for the afternoon nonetheless.” She quirks an eyebrow at you, and then adds, “Enjoy using that name while you still can by the way, before you know it you’re going to have to add a Bering before that Wells.”

Immediately it softens you, and she knows it, “You said that on purpose.”

“I know, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Nor does it change how much I cannot wait for it to be true.”

“Ya know a good future wife would take this huge burden that is your books off my shoulders.” You try to mold your face into a look of pathetic helplessness and all it earns you is a full, whole-hearted laugh.

“Alas, we always knew I wasn’t perfect darling,” and she comes back into the room, leaning down to tuck her fingertips under your chin, her thumb lightly tracing the outline of your bottom lip, before she draws you up for a soft, warm kiss.

You pull her down onto your lap, books scattering around your feet as she kicks the door closed. You whisper onto her lips as she’s starting to lean you back against the floor, “Fine, you win, I’ll pack your damn books, as long as I don’t have to do it right this second.”

“If you have any intention of packing another box at this very second, I may divorce you before we’ve even gotten married.”

“You know you couldn’t live without me.”

“Indeed. That is why I asked you to marry me.”

“And I can’t live without you, which is why I said yes,” and then you’re lost amidst the piles of your stuff on the floor, not paying a bit of attention to the boxes you hit or the piles of books you spill, only focusing on this woman, this incredible, woman who in only a few short months will be your wife. And in your vows, you know you’ll promise to always pack up her books for her, and keep a steady supply of post-it notes handy.


End file.
